Mandy

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Where do I start with this book? It's not by any means a perfect book - there are some flaws that simply can't be ignored, especially not when you're reading this from the 21st century. Even if we take out period-specific biases that litter throughout this book, it still has some flaws like overly convenient or just wildly unrealistic plot developments.

And despite all that, I still give it 5 stars for the sheer enjoyment value of it.

I'll admit that the first 20 chapters or so were pretty slow-going and I almost wanted to DNF. I took about 1-2 weeks to get till Ch 17, then I took a break from the book. When I picked it up again, I zoomed through Ch 18 to 117 (the end) in... 5 days. The book was un-put-downable at a very early point, every chapter was just so much juice and drama that I kept wanting to go on and on and on. I stayed up till 3-5am just reading this book because I wanted to know what was going to happen.

The Count of Monte Cristo has a very simple plot at its core, which is probably a huge part of why it remains so popular until today. A young man, Edmond Dantes, seems to have it all - at 19 years of age, he's an accomplished sailor well respected by his crewmates, he's on the brink of being promoted being naturally favoured by the ship owner, and he's about to get married to a beautiful young woman who has been faithfully waiting for him throughout his voyages. Of course, shit happens. Through a series of very unfortunate events and false accusations, Edmond ends up wrongfully imprisoned for FOURTEEN years, after which he crafts an elaborate and comprehensive revenge for the people who had robbed him of his youth, his prospects, and his marriage.

All of this happens in the first 20-ish chapters, and I was thinking: how on Earth is this book going to drag on for another 100 chapters? But it does. Oh, it really does.

There's daring swordfights and pistol duelling, treasure hunting, multiple betrayals, multiple secret identities, manipulation, so much bribery and corruption, broken marriages and broken-off engagements, secret star-crossed lovers, kidnapping by bandits, and so much more. Dumas also clearly has a penchant for only doing things at the last possible and most dramatic moment, so once you can suspend that disbelief and go along with that ride, it'll suck you in for good. This book is a veritable soap opera in text form.

That is, perhaps, one of its flaws although it's one that I am quite indifferent about. The book isn't even trying to be realistic, Dumas flagrantly enjoys the dramatic and he's going into it unapologetically. Sure, there're a lot of overly convenient and crazy plot twists but the book is clear that this is just alllll part of the drama, it's deliberately shocking you, and I'm here for it. So if you're going into this expecting social commentary or like any kind of realism, you will certainly be disappointed. Instead, look at this book in the same light as you might look upon something like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson or Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne - it's a rollicking adventure book that requires some suspension of disbelief.

OK, let's address the elephant in the room - slavery - which will unfortunately have to go under spoiler tags as it only really becomes a thing after the first third of the book.

The Count takes on two slaves and both of them are extremely problematic imo. The first is Ali, who is described as Nubian/black, mute, and basically submissive. The problematic-ness of this is fairly clear, although perhaps not at all surprising for the time the book was written, around 1840. Ali is apparently a very competant and diligent servant, but his muteness means that he literally has no voice of his own, and he is shown unabashedly grovelling at the Count's feet. In Ch 46, when one 0f the Count's actual paid servants (I can't remember the name) says that he should emulate Ali more since the Count clearly favours him, the Count says no, because if the servant made a mistake, he would only fire him, but if Ali made a mistake, he would kill him and that Ali's life belonged to his simply because he saved his life. I get that this is probably regular fare for 19th century standards, but man is it discomfiting to read in this time and age.The second slave we get to know is Haidee, who is even more problematic to read about. Haidee is a Turkish/Greek young woman of only about 18 years old, who had once been a princess but when her father was killed, she was sold into slavery, whereupon the Count eventually bought her. From the very beginning, the Count refers to her as his "female slave", although it's clear that she is treated on a different level than Ali. While Ali does actual work for the Count, Haidee is referred to as "the young mistress" by the other servants. She keeps to her chambers and does nothing. At first, I was worried that there was some kind of sex slave situation going on which would be extremely gross, but luckily that didn't come true. When we first see Haidee interacting with the Count, she is joyfully relishing in their relationship as master and slave, always speaking submissively, worshipfully, and reverantly to the Count. We learn later on that the Count apparently looks upon her as a father would upon a daughter, which is honestly a bit weird as well, but OK. From the very beginning, there is a power dynamic between them that is significantly more unequal than even the standard imbalance that would already exist between men and women at the time. I was really disappointed when the Count ended up with Haidee at the end - even discounting their large age gap (the Count is in his early 40s while Haidee is still not even 20), I just can't get behind that ship at all with the grovelling way Haidee talks to the Count and how she relishes in submitting to him as her master in all senses of the word.

Some other notes about characters, which will also have to go under spoilers:
- Eugenie Danglars: Probably my favourite character of the book. It's left fairly open to interpretation whether she is homosexual or asexual, but she rebels against patriarchy and the institution of matrimony and doesn't get punished, which is amazing. Too bad she only appears for like 2% of the book or less, but I'm really happy that her character existed. I love that conversation she had with her father Baron Danglars where she coolly asserted her independence and self-will despite his threats. She was frequently described as being "manly", even by other female characters like Valentine de Villefort, just because she actually relished in having a strong personality of her own, but I'll overlook that because she is great and such a breath of fresh air.- Morrel and Valentine: I was OK about their romance, it was very Romeo & Juliet-esque and I feel like Morrel was such a drama queen almost all the time about this relationship, but it wasn't obnoxiously annoying.- Grandpa Noirtier: Amazing. Loved how he didn't let his physical disabilities and paralysis hold him down and stop him from executing some beautiful vengeances of his own.

Finally, my thoughts about the ending: The ending chapters were, for me, a little weaker than the vast middle of the book. I didn't like how a lot of characters ended up, to be honest. I was super psyched when Cadarousse got his come-uppance and loved the dramatic way the Count went about it. I loved that the Count didn't just go around killing his enemies willy-nilly, but set things up properly so that they still had the option to take second chances and redeem themselves, but if they didn't then they would end up exactly where they belonged. The endings for Count de Morcerf and Villefort were pretty brutal, especially with Villefort, but I thought Danglars got off WAAAY too lightly, considering that he was literally the person who hatched up and instigated the whole scheme against Edmond in the first place. He not only escaped with his life and his sanity, but even 50,000 francs that Edmond gave him.A huge part of the ending that I wasn't too happy about was Mercedes. While she got off pretty lightly compared to some of the other characters, I couldn't help feeling that the book was still criticizing and punishing her in very mild and subtle way, but the punishment was still there. And all this, just because she was "faithless" and married Fernand when everyone around her (including Edmond's own father) convinced her that Edmond was dead after he got hauled off to prison? That is some shitty misogyny right there. I suppose it plays into the whole code of conduct system in that society, where people get laughed at for being cowards just because they apologise and call off a duel at the last minute because they realised they had been at fault after all. Also similarly, how committing suicide is more "honourable" than actually facing up to things like bankruptcy or just the consequences of your own actions. So I suppose it would've been seen as more "honourable" for Mercedes to have remained forever unprotected and alone, or even commit suicide herself, rather than marry someone else. Still though... I disagree with all of the above, and think that Mercedes deserved way better. I'm glad that the Count and Mercedes didn't part on bad terms, but I really wish that they had reconciled more intimately (even if not romantically). It's clear that both of them spent almost their entire lives living for each other even though neither of them knew what had happened to the other, and I don't think that kind of bond is broken off so easily. And in the Count's case, certainly not with a teenage girl who just wants to be his slave in every respect. Ugh.A minor point that was annoying about the ending was how the Count kept dragging revelations to "test" people, particularly with Morrel and Haidee. He made Morrel go through an entire month, and then go through some song and dance about suicide and whatnot, even giving him a vial that he pretends to be poison, before he reveals that Valentine is in fact still alive just before Morrel loses consciousness. Now, that is bringing the dramatic way too far imo, and all just so that the Count can "test" Morrel's strength of feeling for Valentine. Why is it up to him to test that?! Then he also goes through another song and dance with Haidee, giving her back her freedom just so that she can be all like, "I'll kill myself if I can't be with you." Errrr. How much stroking does his ego need? Apparently Haidee's feelings for him catches him by surprised cos he hadn't realised fully up to that point that she loved him romantically, but.. just how?!

Tl;dr of this book: Despite a lot of flaws and problematic bits in this book, it's still such a fun and dramatic soap opera of a novel that'll suck you in for hours. In terms of enjoyment level, this book is almost unsurpassed in recent memory. Close one eye to these problems and suspend some disbelief before you tune in!

TW: Physical assault on a teenage girl, both acted out upon and imagined, slut-shaming

This is a difficult book to rate. The mystery was engaging enough, although nothing too dramatic compared to modern thrillers or even some others in the golden age, although I thought the solution was a little too convenient and employed one too many deus ex machina. The writing was engaging at times, but just overwrought at times with too much unnecessary scenes and description. What really turned me off from the book was how much violence was casually imagined and thought about by the characters and the casual misogyny here. Probably a 2.5 stars for me.

A 15 year old girl goes missing for a month and turns up looking fairly beaten up. She accuses a mother and daughter of having kidnapped her, locked her in their attic, attempting to force her to be their maid, and then beating her when she refuses. Our MC, Robert Blair, is the lawyer employed by the middle-aged daughter of the accused pair, Marion Sharpe, to clear their name. But tabloids pick up the news and before any investigation can get underway, the Sharpes already find themselves found guilty by public opinion, especially when the young girl in the case, Betty Kane, is the picture of innocence and easily wins the heart of the masses from her looks alone.

Perhaps what struck me the most is the casual misogyny everywhere in this book. This was published in 1948 so, yes, some leeway has to be given for the story being a product of its times. I'm a pretty huge fan of classic English literature, and particularly cozy mysteries so I've gotten used to closing one eye to certain non-PC things that might pop up in these stories, but this one got so far under my skin that it made me uncomfortable. The girl in this case already turns up beaten up. I don't expect the main characters to have sympathy for her since they are working for the other side, but characters actively and casually wish that she was beaten up more for whatever she might have done. In some cases, some characters wish physical violence upon this girl simply because they are themselves physically attracted to Marion Sharpe and want to defend her, but know nothing yet of the truth of the matter.

This attitude comes from both the male and female characters in the book. A lot is assumed about the girl's innocence, or lack thereof, and a lot of slut-shaming goes on very early on when literally nothing about the case is known by any of the characters making these assumptions. In fact, the girl in question is immediately assumed to be “oversexed” simply because of the colour of her eyes. This is put forth by the accused lady, Marion Sharpe, and our main character Robert Blair agrees with her and even recalls some instances in his experience where it would bear out Marion's theory. Yes, I do know that this craziness was somewhat prevalent back in the 1940s, but it's still very jarring to read now.

Ch 3: “It affords me intense satisfaction that someone beat her black and blue. At least there is one person in this world who has arrived at a correct estimate of her. I hope I can meet him someday, so that I may shake his hand.”“Him?”“With those eyes it is bound to be a ‘him'.”

Ch 6: “An attractive face, on the whole. What do you make of it?”“What I should like to make of it ... would be a very nasty mess.”

And some other quotes from later on in the book which I shall put under spoilers:
Ch 15: "I could kill that girl; I could kill her. My God, I could torture her twice a day for a year and then begin again on New Year's day. When I think what she had done to us I--"And this is said by Marion Sharpe, the innocent lady whose side we're supposed to be on, the one we're supposed to pity for having been made an object of public antagonism, basically the maligned heroine of the story."I think she is her mother's daughter; and was merely setting out a little early on the road her mother took. As selfish, as self-indulgent, as greedy, as plausible as the blood she came of."This is after they find out that the girl Betty Kane's biological mother was apparently something of a party-goer and probably a serial adulterer. They then assume that that is why she palmed off Betty onto her aunt to raise and why Betty never spent a lot of time with her biological parents. Despite that, they assume that this attitude and character flaw is genetic and therefore Betty must be promiscuous as well.

Overall, this is fine if you're able to switch off from all of the above. It's not an exciting chase or a murder mystery, but might be interesting to look at from the perspective of a case where it's not just about the weight of the court charges but also about how to deal with public opinions, which can sometimes be worse than any court sentence.

Honestly, I'm pretty divided about this book despite the great ratings it's gotten on Goodreads so far.

THE BAD:

- Instances of non-consent framed as “desirable”. This book was first published in 2007 and it shows. It's hard to imagine similar plot elements being published by a socially savvy writer in more recent times
- Insta-love/lust is never a great plot choice in my opinion
- The third arc of the book took a rather strange turn, especially with Leo's storyline

THE GOOD:

- Unlike many romance novels where most characters (aside from the MCs) are just glorified background scenery, I appreciate that this book takes the time to develop the personalities, problems, conflicts, and backstories of the other characters, which really does a huge favour for the storyline
- Although MCs have an insta-love problem, they do spend an ample amount of time conversing with each other after that, and their subsequent chemistry isn't unrealistic
- The female MC isn't so much of a Mary Sue - we can see why people can get annoyed with her and her overbearing personality. She does acknowledge and, to a small extent, try to improve herself by the end of the book, although there could be more character development here (the same can't be said for the male MC)

All in all? It's not a bad book, and one of the more well fleshed-out romance novels that I've read. It's definitely going in for the melodrama rather than a light-hearted romance, but I enjoyed that there were substantial sub-plots that kept the story from being too monotonous and fixated on the one relationship between the female and male MCs. Goodness knows, I'm actually slightly more interested in one of those subplots (I have been enamoured with Win and Merripen from the start) than the main characters' story.

Hovering between 3.5 and 4.

Patroclus is born a prince, the unloved and neglected son of King Menoetius. He eventually becomes fostered by King Peleus, and becomes good friends and eventually lovers with Peleus's son, Achilles, prince of Phthia. But Achilles has a fatal prophecy hanging over his head, and war between the Greeks and the Trojans is looming over the horizon.

I've recently read Circe also by Madeline Miller, and the tone of the storytelling in this one is very similar. It's got the same simple folklore storytelling vibe. This is especially evident in the first few chapters when we witness Patroclus's childhood and his insignificance to his parents, which strongly resembles the first few chapters of Circe and her childhood as the daughter of a Titan.

The advantage of such a writing style, however, is that it's very, very easy to read and very accessible. It definitely contributed to how quickly I finished this book - the narration went on smooth like butter. The disadvantage, I would argue, is that it dampens the vividness of the main character from whose POV we are witnessing the story. While you may know Patroclus pretty well by the end of the book, you don't feel very attached to him.

I also thought that I knew Achilles's mythology but it seems like I may either have been wrong or Miller had respun the famous narrative. I definitely don't recall anything about Patroclus dying before Achilles, and that Achilles had been struck by an arrow through the chest rather than at the heels as I would've thought at first. I like, however, that Miller never makes it a secret that Achilles was going to die, which is a turn of events that most people going into this would probably already know. Because most people already know this, you don't actually spend the entire book feeling like you already know what's going to happen at the end. Instead, by acknowledging it, Miller makes readers guess how it's going to happen, and whether it will happen as per their expectations.

There were some points in the book that legit got me on the edge of my seat. A good half of this book takes place in the Greek war camps while they are actively at war, and Miller doesn't shy away from the ferocity and gruesomeness of death. Whether in terms of human sacrifices for the gods, or how captured women are treated as slaves, the violence that it shows and implies can be pretty discomfiting. The bit that got me most on edge was when Briseis was essentially taken hostage by Agamemnon in an effort to make Achilles bow down to him, and the thought of her getting raped and worse was just so, so horrifying, especially since we have had time to get attached to her from Patroclus's POV.

Though the book could get a bit uncomfortable to read at some parts, I really enjoyed the chemistry that we see building up between Achilles and Patroclus. It never felt so much like insta-love. I enjoyed seeing both the build-up and the downward spiral it had momentarily when Achilles became too arrogant and hot-headed for his own good. I was definitely on Patroclus's side when Achilles was willing to let Briseis be taken by Agamemnon and raped just so that he could have an excuse to move against the king. I loved seeing how Achilles's character arc in that sense, how he went from being a regular, happy boy to being put on a pedestal and gaining hubris because of that, becoming ruthless over the sake of his honour like the men he used to despise.

This isn't so much a cosy mystery as it is a rather compact and elegant study of social group psychology in the setting of a plain, honest English boarding school for girls, specifically a Physical Training College, with some masterful writing of tension.

In fact, the actual incident of the mystery only happens after the 75% mark of the book. For most of this you're invited to slowly get to know our protagonist, honest little Miss Lucy Pym, a little sympathetic in how small her life is that she is taken aback by her sudden celebrity after publishing a book on psychology, and the cohort of Senior girls in the College, Lucy's alma mater and where she is briefly staying at as a guest lecturer at the request of her old school friend, Henrietta Hodge, now Principal of the College.

Josephine Tey was a cosy mystery writer writing from the Golden Age, and I'm well up enough in my Agatha Christie and my Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers to feel like I was well equipped to spot the typical formulae of the plot. This book pretty much turned that upside down. By 20% of the book, I was a little confused as to where the plot was going. By 40%, I was wondering if there was ever going to be a mystery at all, but felt strangely compelled to keep on going. Throughout the whole book, while you are getting comfortably settled in to this cast of characters, there's an underlying tension that is very subtly and increasingly alluded to as the plot moves on with sinister inevitability like an unstoppable slow train bound towards a cliff's edge. By the time the incident happens, you almost feel relieved. When the culprit is revealed, I'm pretty sure it doesn't take anyone by surprise - but keep on going, because Tey has more tricks up her sleeve.

This is one of those mysteries that should be wholly unremarkable on paper (even the incident in itself is not particularly dramatic compared to many cosy mysteries I've read) and where there just isn't a lot of action going on throughout the whole, but it really sticks with you. It's not only because of the masterful way the tension is teased out so slowly both within the text and as the reader waiting for the axe to fall in a mystery novel, but also because Tey focuses much more so on the psychology (or the popular concepts of her day) of her characters, the group dynamics, and their motivations.

This is a solid 4.5 stars for me. A trip into a wacky steampunk Wonderland-esque alternative version of London, this book plies a great middle ground between middle-grade and adult without being entirely one or the other. It's brimming with such refreshing creativity and such a vibrant world built with the vibes of Enid Blyton, Lewis Carroll, Terry Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman. Most of this review will be under a spoiler tag because it's just so hard to discuss it without spoiling anything.

“Where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?”

The first part of the book was fun enough, although it read a little tropey and formulaic. The action and surprises only really started at about the 30% mark, and that's when I started getting really invested. There was a bit around the 50-60% mark or so where things got a little draggy, which is probably the only reason why I've knocked off half a star from my rating.

The characters in this book were generally endearing, although you're not really in it for fleshed-out developed characters per se. They're like the wacky ensemble cast that you might see in Alice in Wonderland, hanging out with our heroine throughout her adventure and making the odd humourous quip here and there. Despite this, however, it was easy to get attached to any one of them. My heart particularly belongs to Curdle and Diss.

The book also had such tongue in cheek humour, whether it's the names of places, characters, or things (the Black Windows in a Webminster Abbey is a striking example: predatory wooden windows moving about a cobwebbed church with eight wooden legs), or just the way it pokes fun at tropes and themes in conventional children's adventure stories (more on that under spoilers).

About the plot and themes of this book:

I loved that this book was both an homage and also a satire of the Chosen One trope that it seemed to play into right at the beginning. I was really expecting Zanna to be the main character in this whole thing, but she was the red herring Shwazzy and it was the "funny sidekick" Deeba who turned out to be the real hero. It was just so satisfying and pleasing that of course UnLondon would need an UnChosen One to save it in the end.I loved that it poked fun at that trope in adventure stories where the hero has to go around all the different lands/worlds to collect a series of magical items in order to defeat the big baddie at the end. After suffering a couple of casualties getting their first item, Deeba's like, "But why?" and basically skips past the rest of the list and makes a beeline to the actual weapon that they needed to get their hands on.My attention drifted a little during the bit where they were going to find the featherkey though, and I thought that part was a bit draggy. I only really snapped back when they were dealing with the Black Windows. That was one of the best bits in the book for me.Also particularly liked the ending where it's not some teary farewell, but just a "See you later". Deeba once again rejects the usual trope of having to choose between one world or the other, and just goes on determined to shuttle between both because why not? I love that she gatecrashed Minister Rawley's office and shows just how much her motley crew of UnLondoners can stand their own against Rawley's standard London defences. I almost wish there was a sequel!

Overall, a must-read for anyone who loves absurdist fantasy with a dash of humour. Dare I confess that I might actually have enjoyed this more than Neverwhere?

I overall enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would (considering I DNFed this at an early point during my first attempt a year or so ago). The first 25% or so was too infodumpy and at that stage I was thinking I'd give this a max 3 or 3.5 stars, but after reading it through, I've increased my rating to it to about 4, maybe even 4.5 stars. The world was immensely fascinating and so so interesting, even if the set-up was a little clunky. I also had some issues with some characterisation works in this one, but it was palatable enough to read and especially knowing that Sanderson has improved on many of these issues in his later works (which I've already read earlier).

I also get why the book was so expository at the beginning - it's a huge world and Sanderson really needed to give us enough context to appreciate all the political and religious machinations going on, as well as the central mystery surrounding Elantris. All of these was probably my favourite parts of the book, and what really kept me going. The construction of the religious tension within the society, the clash between different cultures, and the fascinating mystery of Elantris was all so rich and engaging that it really caught me and was why I finished most of this book in one day.

I do think his characterization was also a bit rougher than his later works but we had some really good gems here. In particular, I was a little put off by Sarene's characterisation. I felt she was based a bit off the “not like other girls” trope, but also “different girl who thinks she's unattractive but actually many guys think she's hot” and “yearning for love against all odds”. Then we have to reconcile that with someone who is apparently so very politically skilled and intuitive, apparently able to twist all these veteran politicians and businessmen around her finger from as quick as a single conversation. The combination overall just doesn't make sense to me, it just didn't feel like good characterisation to me. Some parts that just didn't make sense to me: I didn't understand why she put on an act of silliness in front of Iadon but then flagrantly disposed of that act in front of almost literally everyone else in Arelon, as if news of that wouldn't reach back to Iadon. we were supposed to think she's politically manipulative by putting on that act of Iadon, but we also needed opportunities to prove how glib and witty she was and have other ppl admire her, so everyone else in Arelon could apparently see through it. a lot of things happened way too conveniently for her (and for Raoden too), like even her acceptance by the other Arelon nobles into their secret club felt a bit too quick and easy. Overall though, I thought Sarene was perhaps a precursor to Steris from Mistborn Era 2, of whom I'm a much bigger fan, so I'm glad that Sanderson at least brushed up on that.

I did really enjoy the character of Hrathen though! His internal struggles were really fascinating to watch - he was powerful but yet suffered enough setbacks to make him human as well. His was perhaps my favourite POV in the whole book. The only thing that didn't make sense to me was him falling in love with Sarene at the end. It just really seemed to come out of nowhere and felt really unnecessary tbh. I didn't see a single interaction between them that would make someone, especially a hardened priest like Hrathen, fall in love with Sarene.

This book worked well as a standalone but there're a lot of things about the conclusion that made me feel like it kept itself open to sequels, and I've also since found out that Sanderson has in fact planned/written sequels to Elantris which would be super exciting. I'd be really interested to see how he brings this world forward with his current level of expertise versus this being his first published work.

I don't really know what to say about this book... I think I went in expecting the wrong thing entirely. I thought this would be a study on feminism and the emancipation of women, but the author probably isn't that interested in that. I later read someone say that three words summarised Gissing's whole body of work very aptly: “Not enough money.” This book is actually much more about how people landing in this awkward class that was still high enough on the socioeconomic ladder to demand adherance to conventions and rules, but also not rich enough to afford them comfortably, and yet not poor enough to completely disregard those conventions.

Most of the characters here are pretty annoying, both men and women alike. All are selfish and self-centered to some extent, but it is true that the book does a pretty good job at depicting how their lives are almost destined to be ruined simply because all of them had Not Enough Money. I particularly detested Edmund Widdowson... before he married, he was already such a creep, and he only got worse after marriage. What a pain.

While there may be some interesting feminist ideas here, it's strongly comingled with a sense that Gissing may not quite fully agree with the emancipation of women himself, even though most of the female characters here advocated for it. It was sometimes as if their activism was being ridiculed, or that they were shown to actually still want to be in that dependent, submissive, wifely state, no matter how much they protest against it. It's a subtle thing though, so it wasn't ostentatiously annoying. Plus, the women here were also annoying in many ways, different from the men. I couldn't stand Rhoda Nunn and the way her story played out just annoyed me even more.

All in all... this book was just weird. I kept on trudging on with it, strangely fascinated by how annoying all these characters were to me. If studying the struggles of the lower middle socioeconomic classes in late Victorian times is your thing, this book is perfect. Not, however, if you want to read anything about the emancipation of women though.

The stories in this one range from bewildering and I couldn't quite figure out the point of them, to being really memorable. Interestingly, the one I probably enjoyed the most was only one that was probably the most non-fictional, “Lucky Break”. These stories definitely aren't geared towards children as most of Dahl's iconic works are, but feel a bit more like what we would call young adult nowadays, although definitely much more brutal than most YA stuff.

“The Boy Who Talked with Animals” is about a fisherman who hauls up a giant snapping turtle near a Jamaican beach resort. While the guests and fisherman alike are clamouring over how best to kill and consume the turtle, its life is saved by a little boy who claims to have spoken to the turtle and so pressures his parents to pay off the fisherman and hotel manager to save the turtle's life. This one was pretty touching, although I couldn't help feeling a little sad for the boy's parents in the end.

“The Hitch-hiker” didn't feel like it had a proper ending. Our protagonist meets a hitch-hiker who eggs him on to test out the speeds on his new flashy car, but then is caught by a very mean policeman. The hitch-hiker later explains his talent to get them out of a scrape. The story ends on a very strange note, like there is no hint of a resolution and I don't get what the whole point of this story was.

The same can be said for “The Mildenhall Treasure”, which was even less interesting than “The Hitch-hiker” even though it was about people finding buried Roman treasures in a farm. I couldn't quite figure out what was the point of writing this, but apparently it's based on a true story so I'll have to do a bit more research on that one.

“The Swan” was probably one of the most memorable stories of the lot as well, only because it was the most brutal. It dealt a lot with the theme of bullying and I was beginning to wonder why Dahl had a thing for depicting cruelty in children, inflicted both by children and adults. I found this also to be the case in the other Dahl book I just read today, The Witches. In any case, “The Swan” was way worse than that, although I guess I could understand why the ending was left deliberately ambiguous, but also there's a certain sense of melancholy and hopelessness in that ambiguity and that was probably deliberate as well.

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is the cornerstone of the book, and actually probably the most wholesome of the lot. Essentially, it talks about a man who is only motivated by self-interest and greed to embark on a pursuit for a magical talent, but the discipline it required of him to even achieve those talents changed his entire worldview. This was probably the most well-rounded story with a proper conclusion.

“Lucky Break”, as I had mentioned earlier, is really Dahl recounting bits of his life story and how it all led up to his actual lucky break as a writer when he was in America at the tail end of WW2. This was the most absorbing story to me. I hadn't known that Dahl was a fighter pilot, or that he had himself been the victim of bullying and some really brutal treatment (although probably normal at the time) at boarding school, and that probably accounts for the casual violence that his books can sometimes have. Not that, I think, Dahl was a proponent for violence on children, but he seems to have grown up with it as a normal part of life. In any case, it was fascinating to hear about how Dahl had a run-in with C. S. Forester who was generous enough to help him get his first lucky break with a publisher.

“A Piece of Cake” felt like a fever dream, but probably deliberately so. Dahl describes this as a non-fictional account of his own experience when he crash-landed as a fighter pilot, but I've read that there were some details that may have been changed. Nevertheless, it's hard to reconcile this pretty hard-hitting account with all the traumas of being severely injured in war with the children's author that we all know.

Overall, some pretty interesting stories in here but definitely don't expect anything geared towards children in this book.

Yet another sparkling instalment in the Amelia Peabody series! I've already been a fan of this series since I read the first book some years ago (and here we are on book 9!), was less than enthused about Books 7 and 8 which I thought were fairly average, but this Book 9 has restored all my confidence and love for the Emerson family.

The Amelia Peabody series features the Emersons, a Victorian-English family of archaeologists and Egyptologists, who travel to Egypt to excavate at different sites almost every year. Amelia Peabody herself is our headstrong, feminist, sometimes infuriating but almost always charming protagonist, matriarch of the Emerson family. In this instalment, we see the Emersons get blindsided by a mysterious anonymous note asking them to investigate a dig site, Tomb Twenty-A, which doesn't seem to exist on the map. The adventure leads them to discover hidden, recent mummies, a man who was supposed to have gone missing hiding in disguise, a charlatan of a lady, and a whole host of other minor characters, including the Emersons' beloved Egyptian staff.

Amelia remains just as hilarious as ever. Her character and wit comes through so strongly in the first person perspective written by Peters, one of the best examples of character-writing that I would be able to think of. But after 8 books of having Amelia as the one and only perspective we experience the story from, it threw me off a little when the narrative was interspersed (though not abundantly) with excerpts from a Manuscript H that allows the readers to follow her now-adult child Ramses and her now-adult wards, Nefret and David, in order to witness their going-ons that Amelia may not be privy to.

Ramses is another point of interest in this novel. Now sixteen, Ramses has grown into a mini-Emerson. In my head, he's still that annoying (but endearing) little boy of six or seven who sends Amelia into fits with his verbosity, so it's rather shocking when he makes his appearance with a moustache and has a female character set her cap at him for the entire book, or when he starts smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. His previous childhood verbosity has also been replaced by an extensive placidity; Amelia is always describing his face as looking “bland and blank”, like he's retreated into a shell and refuses to show any more emotions. It's kinda sad, I almost feel like a mother who can't admit that her little boy is all grown up and we won't be getting little-boy Ramses back anymore. Nevertheless, this reticent teenage Ramses is clearly still navigating the treacherous waters between childhood and manhood, and consequently as a reader I can't quite get a grasp on his personality, which made him feel like he's lost his spark a little in this instalment.

Nefret was amazing. Having had such an unusual childhood, it is not unexpected that she should grow up to be an unusual lady of eighteen. Unlike Ramses, though, Nefret seems to be surer of herself - possibly a consequence of having seemingly had spent more time with Amelia and Emerson. Sometimes in this novel, it almost feels like they're closer to her and look after her even more so than they do Ramses. Emerson certainly looks upon her as her daughter. It was sometimes a little awkward when they do refer to her as their daughter, and when Ramses and Nefret refer to each other as “brother and sister” because, while I haven't yet spoiled myself for the rest of the series, I'm pretty convinced that they're going to end up marrying each other at some point. After all, even at book 9, I'm not even halfway through this 20++ book long series.

IMO the charm and attraction of all Amelia Peabody novels is the immersive Egyptian setting, the growth and change that each character and their relationship dynamics go through as the series progresses, and, of course, the sharp wit and humour of Amelia's voice. Though each book has a central mystery, I've always felt that the mystery usually just provides an entertaining backdrop and a driving force to get the characters moving about and interacting, but it's never really quite the priority of the writing here. This book is no exception. Don't get me wrong, the mystery was entertaining enough (as it usually is in these books), but the denoument was never meant to be an Agatha Christie level of surprise and the book is clear that it's invested in the human element more so than the action. Sure, there were a few plot twists relating to the mystery that I didn't see coming and those were fun enough, but ultimately, that's not what I go into each Amelia Peabody book for.

Overall, still a recommendation for anyone who already loves Amelia Peabody. If you're new to the series, this might be a serviceable enough book if you're just looking for a random dose of Victorian adventurers in 19th century Egypt, but I'd really recommend starting from Book 1 for the full flavour of this magnificent ensemble of characters to come through.

What an end to Mistborn Era 2. I'm glad I was there the whole way and I think this actually be one of my favourite series of the Cosmere so far, Stormlight Archives notwithstanding since I haven't finished or caught up with that one yet. Naturally, this review would spoil all the books of Era 2 up to Book 3 before this one.

There's a more sober feel to this one, taking place several years after the events of Bands of Mourning and seeing Wax as happily married and a father of two. There're several mentions between Wax and Wayne about how they're “too old” for certain things (like getting exploded), so I assume they're in their 40s or so by this time. Wayne meanwhile is broken up with MeLaan and feeling desolate, worthless, and positively existential, pondering on the role he is playing and needs to play in the bigger scheme of things.

I didn't get why Marasi needed to have a relationship with Allik at all. I could understand why she perhaps needed a failed crush on Wax in the very beginning but I thought she was pretty happy going along by herself. Her relationship with Allik seemed a bit tacked on at best, since we barely see him anyway in this book. It just seemed to be there to tick a checkbox for Marasi's character development, which I didn't think was necessary at all.

The characters in this one are still a blast to read, with all the familiar brands of humour out in full force. Wayne proves himself to be a treasure as always with his wildly inappropriate and untimely interjections to the consternation of Wax and Marasi, Steris is still being Steris and writing out disaster preparation plans when she's bored, but I also missed MeLaan in this book since she strikes out early to go on another mission and doesn't return. That bit also felt a bit too obvious a device for conveniently removing MeLaan from the plot without actually having to kill her off or anything drastic like that, and again I didn't understand why that was needed given that MeLaan has been with them since Book 2. Luckily though, we still have some kandra humour from VenDell, although he's not an integral part of their operations as MeLaan was.

This book is one that really opens up a lot of questions about the Cosmere. I might even say that it ends with more questions asked than answered, at least regarding the Cosmere. With our characters on Scadriel, the plot has pretty much wound to a close. There are some little references to the world of Stormlight Archives in here, but it probably wouldn't spoil readers who haven't read or are halfway through reading that series (like me having only finished 2 books from SA). Or at least, if there were spoilers, I don't understand them and that's the same as no spoilers to me. I look forward to revisiting the Cosmere bits of this book in the future when I have caught up with Stormlight Archives so I can fully appreciate which bits are easter eggs and callbacks to other books, and which bits are new information entirely.

About the ending: I was really, really agitated when I read the ending. Here is the barrage of my emotional response: “this is some Sam and Frodo bullshit!! the sidekick is actually the real hero in the end!? i had a bad feeling when the book's prologue was a scene from Wayne's childhood, it just didn't bode well, y'know? but i'm mostly kinda pissed at Harmony for literally ignoring the hell out of Wayne for the entire series and then just swooping in to give him that final nudge to sacrifice himself at the end. that was such a bullshit move!!! and i'm also kinda pissed that it wasn't Wax, mainly cos i'm the least attached to Wax of all of them, but also cos like, it was always *building* up to him being the sacrificial lamb but for one reason or other, either cos Sanderson is attached to Wax or he has other purposes to fulfill in presumably Era 4, we just kinda shift the burden of sacrifice off of him and give it to Wayne instead, who had never asked for this and was never developed to be the end-game until this book.”Yeah, I really didn't like that Wayne was the one who had to sacrifice himself in the end. I didn't think it gelled well at all with what it was all building up. I definitely felt like it should've been Wax, if anybody. I know this book was dwelling a lot on who and what makes a hero, with Wayne always feeling like it should be Wax. Personally, this cliched but all-too-true quote sums heroism up to me: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Wax enjoyed great power, being almost a Chosen One when he was literally pulled back from the cusp of death by Harmony himself to take up the Bands of Mourning and enjoy unlimited Mistborn powers to reverse the situation and win the day. He continues to enjoy all the plot armour of a hero, but when I feel like the situation is called upon for him to pay his debts and to shoulder that responsibility of being a hero, that is suddenly shifted to Wayne in the end? I just can't stomach it! It's framed as Wayne stepping up and being a hero in his own right in the end, but it just doesn't feel right - it just feels like Sanderson couldn't bear to kill off Wax for whatever reason and decided to just shift it to Wayne instead.

Overall, I really enjoyed this whole series and it has some of my favourite characters in the whole Cosmere so far, hands down. There's a high possibility of me revisiting this one in the future.

I remember watching the live-action movie for this one many years back when it first came out. Aside from it being set in sunny Okinawa with a lot of shots of the ocean and something about a little boy being involved, I couldn't remember a thing about it. In fact, I had a vague impression that this one didn't even have a murder in it (I was very wrong). This book departs from Higashino's usual gimmick and serves things up to us in a more conventional formula, but still with enough twists and turns along the way. I very much enjoyed this.

To start off, this book is not set in Okinawa. It's set in a rural seaside town called Hari Cove, with stunning beaches and a thriving marine ecology. Some of its residents are going head to head with a mining company who is proposing to start drilling operations in the ocean to retrieve precious minerals found on the seabed. Hari Cove is dealing with such industrial threats to its main attraction (the ocean), but also falling behind on tourist numbers and the like. The problem becomes one not just of preserving the marine ecosystems, but of sustaining the town itself.

One might think that this book would go hard on the environmental message here, but to my surprise that's actually not the case. Yukawa, our central “detective” figure and the titular Galileo, is hired by the company doing the mining in Hari Cove as a scientific expert and consultant. It appears that the company is actually not the villainous money-grabbing corporation that is usually the case in plots like these - they are investing money and effort into conducting surveys of the seabed and developing technology to ensure that the mining disrupts as little of the marine ecology as possible. But the residents are still concerned - how little can you disrupt marine ecology when you're going to be mining the seabed? We see a group of residential marine activists passionately debate the topic with the mining company.

On his way to Hari Cove, Yukawa meets Kyohei, a pre-teen boy who is about to spend his summer vacation with his aunt and uncle, Shigehiro and Setsuko, who run the Green Rock Inn. By some coincidence, Yukawa also arranges to stay at the Green Rock Inn during his time at Hari Cove. Though usually annoyed with children, Yukawa finds some joy in conducting science experiments with Kyohei, and teaching him how to do his mathematics homework. Shigehiro and Setsuko's only daughter, Narumi, also helps out at the Green Rock Inn and strikes up a friendship with Yukawa, even though she is part of the group of marine activists who are in the midst of opposing the mining operations at Hari Cove. Being a failing rural town, the only other guest at Green Rock Inn is a quiet elderly man, Tsukahara, who is later discovered dead on the seawall with a head injury.

The pacing of this book is a bit slower, and we spend a lot of time delving into the characters, their interpersonal relationships, and eventually their backstories. I never found this book draggy, however, and unwittingly finished most of this in one day. The chapters were short, and that helped it to feel choppier, even though we're not actually getting a lot done. We also see the resident police duo again, Kusanagi and Utsumi, this time conducting their half of the investigation from Tokyo rather than Hari Cove. I liked that this book had more time to talk about something other than the murder - that is, about tourism in rural towns and the importance of preservation of marine biology. I also found it interesting that instead of being hard-hitting with environmental activism, the book settled for a more neutral stance in which it encouraged open-mindedness amongst both sides so that compromises can be reached. That's certainly different from what we're used to in media nowadays.

The characters in this one were also quite memorable, particularly Kyohei and the unlikely friendship he strikes up with Yukawa. Given that Yukawa is basically an iteration of Sherlock Holmes, prickly even at his best, it is endearing and wholesome to see him somehow develop a soft spot for the boy, in his own prickly way. We also get to see a bit of development on the other characters in the novel and sympathize with each for different reasons. There aren't really any particularly unlikeable characters in this book, every one of them having insurmountable reasons for their actions.

Overall though, a great installment to the Detective Galileo series, and certainly would recommend to any fan of murder mysteries.

This was such a delight to read, although fair warning, there are quite a deluge of characters and gossip from the start that it takes a while to really understand what's going on.

This is an epistolary novel involving an exchange of letters between two close cousins, Kate and Cecelia, talking about their respective seasons in London and the country in an AU Regency England where magic and sorcery are a thing. The exchange is generally witty and they're both clearly feisty young ladies trying to investigate how Kate almost got poisoned by some chocolate and whether one of their friends is under a spell.

My biggest gripe with it is that Kate and Cecy have very similar voices, and the events that happen to them are so similar that they almost parallel each other. Both are harangued by a (different) brooding and sardonic man who is at turns aggravating but also seems to be looking out for them. both have a friend/cousin near them who is prettier than themselves and attracting more attention during the season, but they're totally okay with that. Somehow both also have a possibly malicious witch/wizard nearby who may be attempting to do them harm as well. So I sometimes almost have trouble telling who is where and what is happening where because there're just so many similarities!

It all makes sense when you realise that this book was written by the two authors as part of a “Letters Game”, where two people agree on characters and a setting, and then they write letters to each other from the perspective of their own character, and without telling each other what the plot is going to be so the other person's reaction to the new developments is genuine. It's a really interesting premise and one that I'm somewhat familiar with, having done my share of forum role-playing back in my day which is very much the same in essence if not in form.

This was just such a delightful, light, and quick story. I actually left it sitting half-finished for the longest time because I'll confess that I had a hard time getting into it at the beginning, but once it gets going, you just let it get going. I do wonder how they're going to continue on as there're two more books in this series, but I'm eager to find out.

2.5/5. This started off pretty decent and an enjoyable Sherlock Holmes spin-off by a contemporary modern author but as the book progressed, I found it becoming weirder and weirder. At the end, I don't know if I could recommend it at all.

For one, Sherlock Holmes in this one seems oddly more intense than he really is in the canon. He also makes a lot more mistakes, which cost the lives of at least 2 characters, and only arrives at the solution apparently just before the final reveal. He even gets himself caught by the villainous magistrate just because he was so absorbed or engrossed by his examination of a body? It just seems so uncharacteristically careless.

A lot of things also seemed to come together too conveniently and unrealistically. When Holmes loses a lot of blood after being actually tortured by the said villainous magistrate, Watson arrives in the nick of time to save him. Imagine if Watson had actually done as what both Holmes and Mycroft had told him to do and stayed in London! Holmes apparently is so much on the verge of death that Watson agrees to do an untested and unscientific method of blood transfusion directly from person to person, using himself as a donor. Despite how dangerous this method is (which Watson acknowledges as much to underline how critical Holmes's condition wad and that they were at last resorts), absolutely nothing happens to either Watson or Holmes after this procedure in terms of side effects. In fact, Holmes is quite literally almost immediately better and he sets off with his usual energy to continue on the case within 15 minutes, with some help from cocaine.

And that's my other issue with this book. The book draws a lot of attention to Holmes's cocaine habit. While this is canon, I didn't like how it seemed to be used almost like a device to “dramatize” the book in a way. It was even stranger still when Holmes used cocaine in the above instance almost like it was some magic substance that gave him superhuman powers. Watson talks about how it exacted a cost on Holmes but we never really quite see how ugly it can get, so the net effect was that the narrative almost felt like it was glamourizing cocaine use a bit.

Right at the end, we find out that Holmes has somehow managed to kick his cocaine habit by... mindfulness. I am myself a proponent of mindfulness but I'm really not sure how much it would help if used as the sole method by which someone tried to get over a cocaine addiction. It almost felt like it was trivializing the problem and struggles of drug addiction in a way. Plus, did mindfulness as a concept even exist back in the Victorian/Edwardian era? It was just such a bizarre way to wrap things up.

So after Holmes gets tortured within an inch of his life, gets miraculously revived back to normal with a questionable blood transfusion and cocaine, he goes on to reveal the villains of the piece and immediately after gets unnecessarily squashed by a falling statue which breaks his leg. After all this, he still somehow survives relatively unscathed after a period of rest and relaxation, and of course mindfulness. It's just so bizarre how many accidents and misfortunes befall Holmes in this story.

This whole story kept me going because it almost felt like a train wreck. It wasn't hideously bad but there were just so many bizarre incidents, overcontrived or convenient plot devices, and anachronisms that I was almost mesmerized.

I expected a lot more hilarity and absurdity from a premise like this. It started off promisingly enough but then kinda just fell a little flat after a while. Not to mention, the mystery only took off at about the 50-60% mark so it took a long time before there was any kind of hook for me to get into the plot at all.

I really expected more input from Aunt Dimity's ghost since the book and series is named after her, but we kinda just get a lot of Lori and Bill and their rather unlikely romance. I wasn't very won over by either of them, which made getting through the book a little tough. The mystery wasn't even really a mystery - just a matter of finding out what was the one great sadness of Aunt Dimity's life, and for no bigger incentive other than that Lori's late mom left a letter asking her to do so just because.

If the mystery wasn't exciting, the resolution is even more indifferent. It simply turns out that Dimity had always thought she had caused the death of Bobby MacLaren, her lover and would-be betrothed because she broke their engagement a day before he went on an ill-fated flight as a pilot in WW2. She thought her betrayal had distracted him enough to cause his death during that flight, and his distraught and resentful brother, Andrew, had written her to tell her as much. As it later turns out, Andrew finds out that Bobby had never lost faith in Dimity all along and had already fashioned a wedding ring to give to her. Andrew withheld the wedding ring from Dimity out of sheer resentment. After Lori finally finds all this out, somehow everything is resolved and both Dimity and Bobby can now enjoy the afterlife together.

W-elp.

Overall, the book was serviceable with some bright moments in the narrative along the way, but it could've done with quicker pacing or a more exciting mystery that starts earlier. My experience of the book was also dampened by the performance of the narrator Teri Linden, who didn't seem to be enjoying the book either.

This book had some really interesting questions, I'm just on the fence about how it brought those questions across. The premise was very interesting, the storytelling was engaging, and I was never really bored throughout it all. The beginning started off really strong and sinister but I found it meandered somewhat as it went on. This is a 3 to 3.5 stars for me.

Now an adult with a job caring for patients, Kathy reminisces about her times in Hailsham, a prestigious boarding school that she had attended in her childhood until she was sixteen. Prominent in her memories and amongst her Hailsham friends are Ruth and Tommy, with whom Kathy grows up and subsequently leaves Hailsham. In the outside world, the three of them seek to find out the reason for Hailsham's existence.

While there are some sci-fi elements to this story, it's extremely subtle and really only serves as a backdrop. A lot of good questions are raised (all of them too spoilery to list here), and you can't help thinking about the whole premise of it even after the book is done. The climax and reveal of the story never hit that hard though, and I'm not sure if this was intentional since Ishiguro freely gives out pretty large hints from the very beginning. It was easy to have a good idea what premise of the story was from the first few chapters if you paid enough attention. I also felt that Kathy's perspective felt oddly sterile and detached at some points, even during moments that we as readers have been looking forward to for several chapters before. It makes climactic moments feel a bit like a let-down, but again I'm not sure if this is deliberate on Ishiguro's part, considering the context of the whole plot.

About the themes, plot, and ending:

I liked the premise of questioning medical ethics, especially when it comes to entities created by science for the sole purpose of serving "real" human beings. It's just come to a blur in this book because the clones being manufactured for their organs to be havested seem to be every bit as real as regular people. Cloning has been a hot topic in medical science for ages now, so the premise of this book honestly doesn't sound absurdly far-fetched. The idea that a more "superior" version of yourself is being essentially groomed and then farmed is terrifying and sounds inhumane, but at the same time what happens if these clones are let loose upon the world?A particular interesting thought that struck me was how the clones are not able to have children. As clones, they would have an identical DNA to someone else who was their "model", but being manufactured they had had no say in where their DNA comes from. Whether they had previously been sterilised or genetically modified before birth, the clones do not have the choice to pass on this DNA by having children. It's implied that their DNA is not their own to pass on as they will, since their entire existence is a mirror of someone else's and the society they're in demands that they therefore serve the needs of "regular" humans. It certainly poses a really interesting conundrum that I hadn't previously thought about, regarding this whole thing about whether an entity should be allowed to pass on DNA if it had been copied wholesale from someone else's for specific purposes.Halfway through though, I didn't quite like how the book devolved into a bit of teenage drama with the whole love triangle between Ruth, Kathy, and Tommy, and how Ruth and Kathy just went on catfighting for most of their lives. I wasn't really sure what that accomplished in the larger scheme of things, and plus I just didn't understand why the two girls went on being so toxic and mean to each other but still being super reliant on the other. It was a whole lot of teenage drama that I didn't sign up for.The ending felt a little anticlimactic. I was really looking forward to the whole big denouement with Miss Emily and Madame, but they didn't really say a lot of things that I hadn't already figured out by that point. There wasn't a big secret sinister plot at the back of it. After that, Tommy and Kathy just went on with the rest of their predestined lives, donating until they completed. It felt like nothing much was discovered (especially since Tommy and Kathy had already somewhat known the truth of their beings all along anyway) and nothing much was changed.

I've definitely read this before as a kid but I couldn't recall as much of it as I can with some of Roald Dahl's other more iconic works, so I had to revisit this one again. It was... definitely a trip.

There were a lot of dated concepts in here which is probably not unique to this particular title amongst Dahl's children's books, and I know there's already a debate about how much of this should be “updated” or not, so I won't touch on that bit.

Overall though, this was interesting to me comparing how I read this book as a kid vs how I read it now as an adult. Nothing much about the plot fazed me as a kid, and I thought it was just a pretty fun adventure of a boy and his grandma plotting against and fighting witches. As an adult that hasn't revisited this book in a while, I was incredibly surprised that we were reading all these as children and it was perfectly OK. It made me think about the immense capacity for children to take in some pretty violent concepts and sort of digest it into a natural part of life and the world. Dahl had the excuse of publishing this in the early 80s, but 100% for sure we won't see a children's book like this being written today.

I borrowed this book from a friend because The BFG and George's Marvellous Medicine were those two Roald Dahl books that I didn't get a chance to read as a kid, so I wanted to catch up on that. I never realised until now, now that I am reading it as an adult, the dark undertones of Roald Dahl's stories. The BFG and George's Marvellous Medicine, especially the latter, had plenty of those. This collection also included Matilda which I enjoyed a whole lot as a kid, but now that I am forced to look back on the stories I enjoyed as a kid with an adult's perspective, I discovered that Matilda wasn't all that happy fantasy that I used to think it was either.

4.5 stars for this one! OK, so this one was a really slow start and I almost DNFed at less than 10%. I went back to the reviews page and kinda convinced myself (reluctantly) to continue pushing through. I'm so glad I did! Things really got going around the 30-40% mark and I was so pulled in to the world by then.

One thing that really stood out to me in this book was just how well the female characters in this one stand up until today. It doesn't seem so in the first half, but I felt like by the end, there was a burgeoning sense of female characters wielding agency and being very adept at playing the game of politics, even more so than their male counterparts.

The writing in this one was quite smooth, although I would've wished for shorter chapters. The names take a while to get used to but it's not too bad compared to others I've read. I think the reason for the slow start is because there's so much to set up. The overarching plot isn't super complex but there are a lot of details intricately woven and hints dropped right from the very beginning to make for a very satisfying ending with some twists here and there.

I love the World of the Five Gods and how the magical part of this works. There isn't a magical system to speak of, simply people who are dealing with living in a world where they are the tools or vessels of any one of the five gods. Some of them are granted a temporary “second sight” where they might see auras flaring around certain people, indicating if they have been god-touched or cursed. This whole thing takes a good long while to be established in the book, but I feel like the book really improves after that happens.

Cazaril starts off being a broken and beaten ex-slave into having some deep insights about the gods, and that journey was just such a ride to be on. The book was really about how someone who has already been betrayed to hell and back can still cling on to his morality and hope, and how that still serves as enough of driftwood to buoy him back. I won't say much else for fear of spoilers.

There was also one point where I almost DNFed because it was just too horrifying to contemplate if the book had really gone down that direction. I searched up for spoilers on that plot point and was sufficiently satisfied to continue. Spoiler: This was when Dondo almost had his way with marrying Iselle and had been threatening to rape her after their marriage if she wasn't willing to consummate it. If that had really happened - and I wouldn't have put it past this book - I certainly would've DNFed. Thank goodness things took a much better turn.

Overall, I'd recommend this book for anyone who loves fantasy with a good mix of politics and religion, although be warned that the first half might be slow and might be tempting to DNF.

Halfway through the book, I got really excited because I thought this was a book that was going to be about P&P and also have a P&P-ish plot to it, especially during the middle bit when Alex came under suspicion and DCI Quimby started being nice to Kate. What if DCI Quimby was actually the Darcy-esque character while Alex was Wickham? After all, the whole first half of the book seemed to foreshadow some sort of “appearance is very different from reality” theme which Kate apparently wrote some thesis about.

But such a plot twist was not to be. Instead, DCI Quimby is just another police officer and the romantic hero is still Alex.

The plot trudged along predictably enough, and I wasn't even surprised by the revelation of the murderer. I'd have pegged Eve as the most uninteresting suspect from the start, because she'd be so predictable. When Kate started getting excited about various details falling into place (but deciding that Eve definitely had to be the one who had sent her Kevin's camera because of the way she folded wires, really? Because no one else could fold wires in that same way? Talk about jumping to conclusions), I was actually bracing myself for a bigger plot twist at the end. What if it hadn't actually been Eve, and Kate had let her prejudices get in the way and suspect the wrong person when in fact it was actually someone that no reader would've suspected, a la Agatha Christie murder mystery. Unfortunately, again, that fell flat.

The premise of the book was really interesting, and for that I'd give it the 2 stars. It failed to impress with the conclusion of both the romantic and the mystery plots, however.

There is a very inherent Eurocentrism to this book that the author doesn't seem to even want to hide. At first I thought it was just McClusky being a “bad” character with her off-putting black and white views on history, but I DNFed a little over halfway through the book and I still never got the feeling that McClusky was really meant to be that severely censured.

“Let's face it, for better or worse the last half dozen centuries on earth have been shaped by what we like to call Western civilization. ... When did Europe lose its way? When did its worst ideals triumph over its best? ... When, in short, did the most influential continent on the planet wilfully and without duress screw up on a scale unequalled in all history and in one insane moment go from hero to zero, from top dog to underdog?”“The insane, perverse, wilful self-desutrction of a collective culture that had been four thousand years in the making, smashed utterly almost overnight. Never to rise again, and giving way in its stead to a genocidal global hotchpotch of half-baked fanaticism from both left and right.”“Prior to that point the world was an increasingly peaceful place in which science and society were developing towards the common good.”“You might feel differently about that if you were a Native American, or an indigenous Australian. Or an African in the Belgian Congo-““Oh come ON, Hugh! I'm not saying anything was or ever could be remotely perfect. [...] Men will always take what isn't theirs, the strong will always exploit the weak - no amount of historical tinkering could ever stop that.”“Just try to imagine what the world would be like now if it had never happened - if the great nations of Europe had continued on their journey to peace, prosperity and enlightenment; if those millions of Europe's best and finest young men, the most highly educated and civilized generation the world had ever known, had not died in the mud but had instead survived to shape the twentieth century.” Stanton could see her point. [...] “You're right. Can't fault your argument. 1914 was the year of true catastrophe.”

Stanton gaping at how much pubic hair women actually had...

This is such a strange book. If it wasn't for the talk about cars and telephones and World Wars, I could've thought it was set in the late Victorian era, which I guess is kinda the point. This is actually set just after WW2.

Caroline Dering is a pretty interesting protagonist. I frowned at her submissiveness and she often comes off as lacking agency or the will to make any decisions on her own, but then when you actually take a step back and look at the big picture - she does do a lot of things on her own successfully. She does take charge of her family and her household, and she does put her foot down when necessary. Leda is annoying and spoiled and selfish as shit, but she also displays an unexpected common sense when she encourages Derek Ware to keep at his degree. Derek is still irredeemably annoying.

The book has a surprising number of touching insights about life, especially seen from the eyes of middle-aged people, who are the protagonists of this book after all. One such example is when Mr Shepperton ruminates about how everything is transient in life, both joy and sorrow, and no matter what ordeal or what immense happiness one is going through, one eventually moves through it into a placid neutrality in the end.

Some complaints I have that I could perhaps close one eye to because of the time period it was written in, but which still rubbed me the wrong way. There are some casual racist comments in this one, although somewhat to be expected of books in this era. Luckily, they were only very brief and rare fleeting mentions and wasn't expounded into. What I wasn't a fan of was how much everyone kept fat-shaming Comfort Podbury, the Dering's help. It was already mentioned that Comfort possibly had some medical issues with her thyroid causing her weight gain and perhaps that is a call for compassion, but we are still treated to some truly awful and uncomfortable statements made by the characters about her size. At least there were those who were more compassionate towards Comfort, like Caroline and Bobbie Dering, who tried to encourage Comfort to seek medical attention for her thyroid issue instead of sweeping things under the carpet. Even so, there were still moments when even they were tempted to laugh at Comfort or talk about how slow she is. All in all, she's depicted as good-natured, dependable, but a bit of a comedic figure and the comedy is all based on her size. While I suppose I'm not too surprised about the treatment of Comfort's character given the time period this was written, it's still a little uncomfortable to read in this moment.

The ending was also so abrupt! After all that, we didn't get to see the final reunion scene between Caroline and Robert? Also what happened with Leda? She just disappeared to her aunt's farm and that's it? It's probably deliberate but it really felt like nobody got any resolution here. The “good” people aren't rewarded adequately (Caroline, James, Bobbie), and the “bad” people aren't punished or redeemed (Leda, Derek). I know books do that deliberately, but it just didn't feel like that kind of book to me.

I really wanted to like this book, but I end up feeling rather conflicted about it.

The world it sets up is compelling, although the magical system is pretty much non-existent. Even though our “hero” Quentin Coldwater attends a magical school, we learn next to nothing about how spells work, how it's casted, and what potential it has. We're simply told that spells are cast, we see the effects they have, but we have no idea how it happens. For a book that has been, for so long, tagged as “Harry Potter for adults”, it sorely lacks the comprehensive world-building and deeply intricate magical system that Harry Potter has. Anyone who has even just watched the Harry Potter movies could probably name at least one or two famous spells (Alohomora? Expecto Patronum? Avada Kedavra?). Having finished this book, I struggle to remember any spell that was cast, and I probably couldn't explain coherently how magic even works in this world, except that only special people who can somehow wield it gets sent to Brakebills.

I was also terribly uninterested in the cast of characters. Eliot and Josh are interchangeable sex-driven jocks, Janet was just downright annoying and a one-dimensional archetype. Air-headed, endlessly promiscuous, and selfish, she's that stereotype of a high school cheerleader with no conscience, character, backstory, and simply exists to wreck some havoc in the main characters' lives and inject some sex into the plot line.

Quentin was worse. It felt like I had to sit through all that hormonal teenage whining of Order of the Phoenix again, but without any of the redeeming sparkle that Harry Potter generally offers. He was a main character that continually annoyed and annoyed and I could never find it in me to root for him at any one point. The lowest point of his character arc was when he blew up at Alice for sleeping with Penny, even though she had done it partly in retaliation at him sleeping with Janet. I kept waiting for Alice to round up on him and give him a taste of his own medicine, but she did nothing of the sort and that was so, so frustrating. Some parts of the story were just downright insulting to women, and while I get that the story is told through Quentin's eyes, I expected some sort of redemption at the end where he realised what a chauvinistic prick he's been - that never came and honestly, that really dampens my motivation to continue reading the trilogy.

For all its faults, I will say that the book got very engaging in the last third, and I found myself not being able to put it down. The general gist of the plot and the twists it involved were pretty satisfying, and it's only because of that, certainly not the characters, that I'd even consider continuing the trilogy.
, but that never came by the end of the book, which honestly makes me

Diana Wynne Jones has been one of my favourite authors since I was a child but this book really highlighted just how much wit she had and how much of it she probably had to hide since she's most well known for her children's books. This book is a parody of the entire fantasy genre pre-90s (this was published in 1996) with the tone of a very disapproving aunt.

FELLOW TRAVELERS: These are people who join the Tour for a short while and then leave or get killed. If they have NAMES and characters, then you will be sorry to lose them, otherwise not.

GAY MAGE may be one of your COMPANIONS on the Tour. He will be very beautiful and he will dress in gorgeous colours.

Baths are the occasion for SEX with one or more of your FELLOW TRAVELLERS. No matter how irritating you have found her/him up to then, after or during the Bath you will find her/him irresistible. It is probably something in the WATER.

Yes, it is clear that only males get to visit the human islands and only females find their way to the Dragons. This is the tough, sexist way the Management wrote the Rules.

DARK LADY: There is never one of these—so see DARK LORD instead.

Curses on RINGS and SWORDS: You have problems. Rings have to be returned whence they came, preferably at over a thousand degrees Centigrade, an the Curse means you won't want to do this.

Actually a pretty enjoyable YA fantasy/romance romp set in an AU Regency England where elves and magic are recognised part of everyday life. There's something very whimsical and different about the vibes of this one compared to other similar types of stories in its category and genre, and I'm pretty interested in trying out the rest of the series.

After a chance encounter with an elven lord in her childhood when she inadvertently offends him, Theodora Ettings is left forever more with only half a soul. She is unable to properly feel what she calls “long-tail emotions”, and can also be clueless as to social cues and how to properly express whatever emotions she does experience. Dora is set up to be her cousin Vanessa's wingman during the latter's Season in London. When forgotten at home one day, Dora decides to take a walk and wanders into a magic bookshop where she accidentally meets Albert Lowe and his friend, the Chief Magician of England, Elias Wilder, the Lord Sorcier.

Things I really liked about this one:

There is a believable set-up and chemistry behind the romance. Unlike so many other books in this genre where the main characters very quickly feel all tingly in the right places when they first lay eyes upon each other, Dora and Elias start off more than a little grumpy with each other before they very slowly, and through a series of realistic interactions and events, get to know each other better and build up some kind of trust and rapport. Whatever big romantic moments there were actually worked for me. I'm quite picky with chemistry in romances so the fact that this one was satisfactory to me counted for a lot.

Dora is a protagonist I could get behind. I know a lot could probably be said about the real-world parallels of the fact that she is unable to articulate emotions or read social cues, but that's outside of the realm of this review. Dora as she was portrayed in the story was someone I could get behind, even though she supposedly only had half a soul. Her bluntness with everything was refreshing in terms of the story and went a long way to circumvent the awful miscommunication tropes in the genre that I really do not enjoy reading. In fact, (spoiler for ending) when I had some suspicion that she might actually reunite with the emotional Dora in Faerie at the end, I was kinda sad and rejoiced a little when they found a way to have Dora stay the way she had always been.

The story was interested in some larger social issues beyond the romance. Not all romances or fantasy stories do this at all, and I always appreciate when there's an overarching cause for the characters to get involved in. Undoubtedly the issue was rather more simplified and painted in more black and white terms than it would've been in real life, but I still appreciate that it was even added in in the first place and not just simply tacked on. It really was woven quite intricately into the whole plot and just a lot of kudos for that.

Albert Lowe. Possibly my favourite character in the book, not really sure why.

As usual, my thoughts about the ending:

The whole confrontation between the two Doras and Lord Hollowvale almost felt a bit anticlimactic, although I guess this book isn't meant to be super epic so I doubt there'd be anything big-scale happening. The whole ending set-up just all seemed rather convenient somehow. Everything up to that point had been splendid. Although it wasn't unsatisfying, I feel like we could've had a more dramatic ending. I couldn't believe that that was the end of Lord Hollowvale, just like that, and that the emotional Dora would be happy to just be stuck in Faerie forever and sacrifice herself for the other Dora to go back to England.Also, plus, I really hadn't expected Albert to end up with Miss Jennings. I was kinda rooting for him and Vanessa tbh, or was hoping for him to be the main character of the sequel in this series. I really liked his character!!