Rai

An easy, light read that is good fun with a m/m romance that is very sweet.

I am not typically either a YA or Romance reader so if you're in the same boat; I found this definitely worth the read. It's easy to read, first-person story told by Cal, an internet-famous 17 year old whose life is uprooted when is dad is (unexpectedly) accepted into a space program to Mars. The family moves from New York to Texas to take up residence in Houston for the father's astronaut training.

It is written in the lexicon of a teenager in 2020 and I feel that lends to a more authentic feel as a personal coming-of-age story under exceptional circumstances. The romance is key to the story but not 100% central so you can't get sick of too much soppy stuff. Not that there's much anyway as Cal and Leon are more the kind of sweet young love than the drippy overly saccharine sort.

Besides the queer romance, the book deals with themes of mental health, loss, fame and integrity and does so very well. All of these aspects come together to build the story up and to ensure it has the strength to stand on it's own and is not just a romance novel. It is clever, funny and moving.

This and my other reviews are on my website: Aspects of Me.

Lovely found family space exploration novella. Told from one POV as if addressing an audience ‘back home' on Earth. Chambers is excellent at bring heart into sci-fi and I love it.

HUGE CW FOR SUICIDE as soon as the book starts. And CW for mistreating and gaslighting of someone with mental health difficulties throughout the book.

Aside from being predictable there were various parts of this book that irritated me.

The main character has some very stuck-up, prudish opinions that really added absolutely nothing to the story. She makes some comment about how tattoos are wrong and people who get them are not only idiots but apparently morally bad. WTF. She assumes the male landlord is a bad guy because he has tattoos.

Later, she hears the couple fighting and someone getting punched. She assumes he hit her despite him having a black eye and her being unscathed. Honey, you went to private school and you can't put 2 & 2 together?

Speaking of private school. This seems up for debate as at one point the author says private school and at another says public school, which are different things. Which is it?

Somehow, despite it being totally illegal in the UK, MC goes out on her lunch break and casually buys some pepper-spray.

The only reason I finished the book was to see what the reason she was so obsessed with this house in this otherwise totally shitty situation was.

And what kind of person in the 21st Century says “pauper suicide”? I mean, really?

Unlikeable characters throughout, huge plot holes, no real explanation/ending to one of the plot lines, and someone murders a cat. So. Overall, not worth the effort imho.

A beautifully written book with subtle complexities, glorious prose with clever time-travel and a warming story of falling in love. If enemies-to-lovers is a trope you like, this pulls it off in a totally uncliched way with a deep Sapphic love borne on letters across time and space.

I can see how this might polarise some opinions and I held off reading it for so long because I was worried I might fall into the dislike camp - not so! I've heard this book accused of being too complicated and boring people but I couldn't disagree more. It is perfectly balanced and brilliantly executed; I found myself hungry to read the next chapter every time I got to the end of the previous. Clever, then, that ‘hunger' is a theme Blue and Red explore in their missives to each other.

When you think of a rollercoaster it's fast, frenetic and a little bit scary, which is what you'll get from We Are the Dead without having to queue for two hours first. WATD is the debut novel from Mike Shackle in his grimdark series The Last War, following its characters through the dark and deadly life in an occupied territory as they try to resist the enemy and take back their country, Jia. The book's main storyline takes place over a span of eight days, which adds to the fast-paced nature of it, and follows five main points of view: Tinnstra, Jax, Dren, Yas and Darus.

Tinnstra is a young woman consumed by fear and a desperate desire to live but not necessarily the courage to fight for it until she gets caught up in an escape attempt that could give all of Jia hope for a future of freedom. While the blurb on the reverse of the book only specifically mentions Tinnstra, she is not the sole focus of the story; nevertheless her arc presents a refreshingly honest take on violence and war. After all, if you look within yourself, would you really have the courage to fight an unwinnable war knowing it would cause your certain death? Or, would you be petrified and forced to run and hide?

Dren's story - aside from Tinnstra's - shows some of the most growth. From a reckless, rebellious teenager, hellbent on killing the enemy no matter the cost, to a young man who can see the bigger picture and the part he has to play in it. The character development across the board is excellent and Dren's is possibly my favourite.

There is plenty of dark, grim and gritty content here too. Everyone suffers some sort of familial loss, even if in one case it's a twistedly happy affair. There is death on a mass scale, betrayal, failure, torture and the ever-present looming darkness of fear. This is still a tale of rebellion and resistance despite all the odds going against our Jian friends and a brilliant read that is more than it seems.

> Some TW/CW for the book: suicidal ideation, sexual assault, mentions of and attempted r*pe, torture <

As a modern retelling of The Turn of the Screw I was sceptical at first as I didn't enjoy the original. I saw a lot of positive reviews for Ware's interpretation and ended up receiving this via a giveaway on bookstagram.

I enjoyed this much more than ‘...of the Screw'! The modernised elements (such as the smart house) gave more avenues to explore strange goings-on at Heatherbrae and had me guessing. It is a clever use of technology in a ghost(-ish) story, proving that not all spooky things have to be in ancient mansions purely by candlelight.

I would have liked to have known what happened to the characters after the end of the main story - written as a letter from the protagonist as she waits in jail for trial - but I'm content enough to draw my own conclusions.

A good thriller, cleverly written and enjoyable (so much so I finished it all in one day).

The Blurb

I found the blurb for this book, with hindsight, a little misleading. Similarly it's classification in ‘Horror' fiction and whatever algorithm suggested it to me having just finished a ghost story. If you find yourself thinking this is a ghost horror; it's not. There are no ghosts nor any supernatural goings on. To me, expecting a ghost story I was a little disappointed - more on what's actually in the book later.

The Prose
This is written in what I can only think to describe as continuous prose. There are no speech marks and no new lines for dialogue. There's internal and vocalised dialogue mixed in together that is hard to differentiate. It is one long train of thought from the narrator, Sylvie, and it does get hard to follow. I was OK dealing with it around 70% of the time and the remainder I found myself puzzling, re-reading and ultimately being jarred out of the flow of the story. This meant I couldn't fully engage with the story because of both content and style.

The Story
As I mentioned before, there's no ghosts. I kept reading in the hope that some would appear once the eponymous Ghost Wall was constructed by the characters. Still, no. Instead the story is one of domestic abuse and violence enacted by Sylvie's Dad on both her and her mother. The setting of an experiential archaeology field trip is superfluous to the central story of the abuse and the story could have been set anywhere. I found a lot of it an unpleasant read - with a knot in my stomach and a desperate desire to jump into the story and talk some sense into everyone involved. I was frustrated and angry.That is the greatest success of this book: that it makes you feel angry and awkward and impotent at the plight of two women being physically and psychologically abused. It is also for this reason I find it a little disrespectful to classify the book as 'horror'. Not to the author, or the book, but to the real people in real life who have to suffer like Sylvie and her mum. Those situations are horrifying and they are real. I know it's unlikely the exact events of Ghost Wall have happened in real life but many similar things have - and they are not 'horror' fiction.OverallIt is a realistic account of domestic abuse and especially how it can mess with the victim's mind. If you weren't expecting that, then be aware this won't be a pleasant read. The style of the prose is hard to stick with and you may get lost along the way. The story ends just as Sylvie might be getting a chance at something better - and I want to read about that - which was a little frustrating as well. The blurb and classification of the book are a bit off; do a bit more research than I did and read through other people's reviews - don't just look at the average rating.

The combined issues I've highlighted, for me, detracted from the overall experience. I would still say it was an important read even if I didn't like it much in the end. It is certainly not an easy read.

If you've come for the “lesbian necromancers in space” then, er, readjust your expectations. There's no romantic or sexual involvement between anyone. Sure, Gideon fancies women but at no point does anyone identify themselves by a set sexuality - she could be bi for all we know - and while she sort-of fancies one of the other necromancers (not Harrow) for a while, that's it. She notices when one of the other women is in very flimsy attire but also notices the ‘58 abdominal muscles' of one of the male cavaliers too. Also, Gideon is not a necromancer. Also, they're not really in space, they're on a planet. So forget all the taglines, because they're bullshit.

I liked Gideon as a character but felt like there wasn't enough development of her and Harrow (more in the spoiler section below). Sure, their relationship changed but it made some big leaps as opposed to a steady progression and as such some of the story that relied on their relationship fell a bit flat. The necromancy and sword fights were pretty fun and if there'd been more than 2 or 3 actual fights I might not have felt quite so bored mid-book. I started skim-reading toward the end of Act III through some of it just to get to the next dialogue section as that seemed to be where all the information lay.

One criticism I heard before reading was that it was hard to follow all the names of characters because there were so many ways to refer to the same person, e.g.: Coronabeth Tridentarius was also Corona and ‘the glorious twin' (or something similar). And while ‘the mayonnaise uncle' was an amusing moniker, it was a bit difficult keeping everyone straight in my head and I had to keep referring back to the roster at the start of the book. The names were also a complete pain to try and pronounce correctly and I spent the whole book arguing with my brain and ended up shortening names to make it easier to read. After I finished the story, I found the pronunciation guide right at the back of the book, however, even then, my brain rebels.

One such other naming scheme was that of the Fourth house's obnoxious teens. The awful teens. And so on. Despite the fact Gideon and Harrow are also teenagers. This felt like something a person in their late 30s or up would moan about - teenagers so obnoxiously full of life - not an 18 year old.

———SPOILERS BELOW————-

There was a lot unexplored and unexplained and bits that seemed to contradict other parts of the story; it is mentioned that Gideon survived huffing nerve gas for 10 hours as an infant; she's survived a lot of things that should've killed other people; her parentage is a mystery; and then all of a sudden she's dead at the end of the book. Um, what? Sure I expect those things will be explored in the next book(s) but the ending doesn't exactly encourage me to read those because there's just too many arrows that were let loose all at once and only some hit their mark, the rest are scattered all over the place.

In a review for Harrow the Ninth, I read that Gideon was H's “one true love” and, I'll be honest, that is 100% not what I got from this book. They realise they need each other and rely on each other but “one true love” was not what they were exuding at all. Here, I'll point back to my comment about their relationship development taking some awfully big leaps without any groundwork to justify them.

It took me almost a month to read because of all these little niggles and because Act 3 & 4 were just a bit bleh. The novelty of having Gideon be a foul-mouthed teen using 21st Century language wore off pretty swiftly as I wondered how the heck she was meant to have heard of pizza or mayonnaise while spending her entire life on a dingy rock of a planet where they all live underground and eat gruel and ‘snow leeks'. Hm. It's not quite bad enough to be a 2 star but I was really hoping for better.

A good little accompaniment or Post Script to the Greatcoats series from the pov of King Paelis in his final hours. Could be a teeny bit spoiler-y if you haven't finished the original quartet yet but nothing major.

3.5 out of 5.

An engaging thriller with a hint of the supernatural mixed in.

This is a multi-perspective thriller with a good balance between victim/s, killer and police POVs set in England with some internal themes around parenthood - specifically fatherhood - and the relationships between fathers and sons. The added reflection between the different father-son relationships in the book made for some extra content to think about in relation to the central story and characters as well as a couple of unseen twists along the way.

One part of the killer's identity was guessable but another aspect to it was hidden until late in the book and there were other reveals that I didn't see coming.

The prose was easy to read and still engaging and the main character was sympathetically written. There were some supernatural-ish elements that I can't add much more about without spoilers and some additional creep-factor moments that added to the suspense.

Worth a read and can be picked up fairly cheap (e.g. The Works, paperback, £2; Amazon Kindle ed, £2.99).

It's a fairly short thriller at 255 pages and it has a tight mystery at it's heart that will keep you guessing. I finished all within a day; it's easy to read and intriguing to keep you going. You can sense something's off with some of these characters but it's never too much to give the game away too soon. A great little who-dunnit.

Bit more of a crime thriller than a horror for me; did well to make me hate the characters I was supposed to hate; and a bit different to her other books I've read so far. Engaging but still has the usual litany typos I've come to expect from Coates' work.

I have had to DNF this title after around 30% for a couple of reasons:
First, I was expecting the narrative to be from Tikka's perspective as an adult as opposed to as a child.
Secondly, I didn't get on with the writing style and prose. There seemed to be a simile or metaphor every other page and that became very jarring and distracting. There was a lot of unnecessary description and the story was progressing very slowly.
Owing to this, I was not enjoying the book and have decided not to force it and move on to something else.

This is a book with a lot to offer. We have four POV's from two main characters and two slightly more secondary characters. The narrative swaps between these four in a chronological fashion, as opposed to simultaneous so the book covers a good period of time and develops events and characters over this. Our two key protagonists are Ead and Tané, two women from opposite sides of the known world who each come to discover their importance to the endeavour to save the world from the returning Nameless One: a big, nasty fire-breather dragon (or wyrm as the book prefers) who will destroy humankind just as he attempted to do before, 1000 years ago.

Both face danger, tragedy and huge feats of endurance and strength to reach the end battle; Ead as a member of the eponymous Priory of the Orange Tree and Tané as an Eastern dragonrider. The East reveres dragons - these are water and air dragons, not fiery fiends - as gods and to be a dragonrider is a great honour that requires years of training to compete in a once-every-50-year selection process. These Eastern dragons are graceful and beautiful and able to live in harmony with humans; the Western dragons/wyrms are the fire-breathing kind who seek to dominate the world and they are waking up from their slumbers to heed the coming of The Nameless One.

Without going into the story much more (trying to avoid spoilers) I can only attest that it is well pace, cleverly written and highly engaging. While I found the first few chapters a bit of an ‘info-dump' and a little difficult to get used to the dialog, after this I was constantly wishing I could stay awake a little longer to squeeze one more chapter in. Shannon does a great job of dripping mystery and questions into the story; as one resolves, another question appears to keep you intrigued.

It is a long book at 804 pages of story and while there are sections/parts that this is divided into, each part could not be separated out to make this into 2 or more books. It all flows together and is well worth the commitment. Commendations to Shannon on creating such a massive tome that doesn't feel like a chore and keeps the reader interested throughout.

There are a lot of themes that are explored in the course of the story including, love, duty, justice, courage, honour, religion and the overcoming of our differences. The two key Western religions both venerate a female figurehead of one sort or another; and same-sex relationships are not frowned upon in these societies. There is a historical m/m relationship and a present-day f/f one; while both encounter resistance, this is not because the relationships are queer, as we would see it, moreover because they each involve a member of nobility or royalty who is controlled by other forces to conceal their relationship - one of the men is already married and a father, honour-bound to remain so; and one of the women is controlled by external, malicious, forces to the extent she keeps her true self thoroughly hidden.

While there are battles and tragedy, romance and intimacy, there is nothing particularly graphic or gory in this book; if that is any concern to you. What you will find are beautifully written characters and compelling story with mages, witches, queens, emperors, dragons, wyrms and many other magical beasts besides. It is a great read and this edition has magnificent cover art so that The Priory of the Orange Tree will shine on your shelves for years to come.

Another enjoyable romp into the Alien universe, this time with a long removed descendent of Ripley in the empath Decker. Strong-armed by WY into a ‘bug hunt' with a crew of mercenaries, Decker's empath abilities add an interesting new angle to explore in the Alien format.

3.5 stars

This was an enjoyable novella with some great ideas around time travel, the editing of history and a hint of chaos theory in there. Owing to the format however it did feel a little too fast and I would've liked more exploration into the characters and the whole ‘History Wars' idea.

It features a (closeted) wlw relationship in the 1788 timeline between Alice Payne and her companion Jane although we don't get to see much of them just being together as the pace is so fast there's always some new urgent matter for them to tackle together.

It was a good, if quick, sci-fi read with a queer MC that I really would've liked to have been longer.

I picked up The Twisted Tree because it was a) cheap, b) fairly short and c) set in Norway. It sounded interesting and the cover art helped a little too. I was intrigued how the setting would interact with the story and to that point I hadn't read much set in Scandinavia. I admit points a & b appealed because I felt I was falling behind on my Reading Challenge and needed a bump; nevertheless I ended up enjoying the book more than I expected.

We follow a young teen, Martha, who has had an accident leaving her blind in one eye and with some facial scarring. Not only that, she has begun to sense things whenever she touches others' clothes: feelings, memories & intent. Her accident happened at her Grandmother's cabin in northern Norway, when falling out of a big tree that her Grandmother tends to, and she hasn't been back since. After writing her Grandmother a host of un-replied letters asking about her new found sense, she travels to the cabin my herself.

What she finds when she gets to the cabin isn't what she was hoping for. She meets Stig, a teenage boy who has also run away from home, and together they face some terrible monsters - both real and metaphorical - before Martha has to truly embrace her new ‘condition' in order to save their lives.

This is a well-written supernatural tale that anyone with even a passing interest in Norse mythology should pick up. It isn't quite ‘horror' and it isn't quite ‘coming of age' but the book does have elements of both. It deals with a line of women who have a shared heritage to protect and what might happen if the chain through the generations is broken. It also looks at the repairing of mother-daughter relationships and, in particular, where the child is guiding the adult through a complicated situation.

The character building by Burge is very good and the story is well-paced and engaging. It is a quick read at 180 pages and still a perfectly formed story that left me wondering where these characters would end up next.

3.5 stars
This is a good suspenseful book that explores bonds of sisterhood and family in and through adversity and how far Korede would go to protect her little sister Ayoola, in spite of her murderous tendencies. I enjoyed the writing and characters but I really wanted Korede to stand up for herself given how maligned she is by almost every other character in the book. In that respect, I was a touch disappointed at the ending. Otherwise, definitely worth picking up!

A proto-Creepypasta. Having never read much of the genre before this was recommended as a “classic” and I sought it out. Originally published on Angelfire (woah there, nostalgia) as a blog, the story capitalises on the episodic format to keep you reading. A good creepy bit of folk-ish horror.

2.5 Stars

It was OK. I recognise that for it's time it was good, sinister and a bit creepy but only if I sat and thought about the torment Jennet (the eponymous Woman in Black) had to go through. I feel my brain is just not made for classics or gothic horror as I tend to find both terribly dull.

For added interest, try reading this as a cautionary tale as to what happens when patriarchal systems of oppression get their way. What of the book would have come to pass if Jennet had not been cast out by her parents?

This and my other reviews are available at my site: Aspects of Me

Gods of Jade and Shadow is a little different than my usual fantasy choices - I don't tend to read fantasy based in our real world Earth - and I was not disappointed. The journey of Casiopea Tun is one I found myself readily investing in and just as at-first rude & lofty god Hun-Kamé softens and grows on Casiopea so does he too with the reader.

The quest they embark upon doesn't have great odds and along the way they meet demons, ghosts, spirits, witches, warlocks and Lords of Death. Hun-Kamé seeks to restore his power and himself to the throne of Xibalba (a form of Underworld in Mayan history) but he needs Casiopea's help to do so. She is stuck living with her awful racist family who treat her with cruelty and disdain - she wants to escape and the time she spends with Hun-Kamé becomes some of the most vibrant and exciting days of her life; even with all the threat, dread and sacrfice.

It is set in the 1920s so some of the prose and dialogue is suitably antiquated; if you're not used to reading historical fiction it might take a little bit to get used to (like me) but it is worth it. This is a wonderful story that will teach you a few little snippets of Mexican and Mayan history along the way. Don't worry, you don't need to know anything special in advance as Moreno-Garcia not only guides us beautifully through the narrative but includes a handy Glossary at the end of the book too.

4.5/5

I came across this via a “customers who bought...” suggestion on Amazon while looking at another Essex-based author's horror-ish novel and decided to give it a try. I am not normally one for ‘period' content and was willing to suspend my usual scepticism about Victorian-era “Gothic” horror to see what was the deal with these wooden companions in the spooky, tumble-down mansion in the countryside.

I binge-read it in a few evenings over the course of 4 days and was hooked. I wanted to know more about the characters and the story behind them and the creepy companions they found in the old country house. The writing and dialogue, while dated appropriately, wasn't overwhelmingly obscure and remained accessible (which is what usually puts be off period pieces).

Purcell leaves plenty to the reader to make their own conclusions and if you get to the end and have some of the same questions I did, you'll be pleased that she's answered here on GoodReads!

It is well paced and suitably tense/suspenseful; it is focussed more on the psychological elements of terror as opposed to going after you with jump-scares or gorey descriptions. There's just enough to set your imagination running off with a thread and building the tension further.

To me, the book has some very cinematic elements and I could certainly see the story being picked up and adapted for the silver screen. I would love to see how it could be interpreted for cinema.

As a final note, if you have a house that ‘breathes' at night and value your sleep, I'd advise not reading in bed late at night.

3.5 stars.

As my first completed book of 2019, I freely admit I started it at the end of 2018 (back on 28 Dec) as a group I'm in on Goodreads is having a discussion about it over January with the author. I read this over the course of a week, although if taken without any breaks it was more like 3 days, and surprised myself how quickly I got through it. I was reading the Kindle version having grabbed it fairly cheap over Christmas.

It doesn't have traditional chapters, which confuses the Kindle reader, moreover it has larger sections broken down into smaller parts that are entitled with the character who's viewpoint the passage is in. I'm not a fan of labelling the point of view and prefer to figure it out simply from the text itself however in this case it became useful towards the end of the novel when the action ramps up.

The story follows an ordeal that besets Wen and her two fathers, Andrew and Eric, when a group of strangers appear at their remote holiday cabin asking for their help to halt the apocalypse. Violence is inevitable from the moment the sinister Leonard starts asking Wen odd questions in the front yard as she catches grasshoppers and the likelihood escalates as three more strangers appear and Wen runs in to her dads to tell them.

After forceably entering the cabin and restraining Andrew and Eric, Leonard et al tell their tale of visions and instructions that lead them all to this “special family” in the cabin with the red door and that, without them, the world will shortly end. Without spoiling any further goings on, what faces the group is a desperate struggle to grapple with damning information and inexplicable actions.

While an entertaining read, I wouldn't describe this as ‘horror' as many others have. It isn't scary or particularly disturbing; similar to ‘Head Full of Ghosts', the book looks at what is a variation on events that have almost undoubtedly happened somewhere at some time in modern history. If you find it disturbing that humans can do terrible things to each other then you may want to consider if you are too naive for Tremblay's work.

Across both ‘Head Full of Ghosts' and ‘The Cabin at the End of the World', Tremblay's prose paints a dim view of organised religion and the part it has to play in the atrocious things people do to one another. While it's primarily focused on Christianity or adjacent faiths, the impression remains that it extends to all organised monotheist religions prevalent in the world today. Whether this is a reflection of the author or simply an easy thread to pull on to add an extra dimension to his stories, I couldn't say.

Overall the prose is well written, with the exception of the let's-hyphenate-a-bunch-of-words-together tendency that crops up a few times throughout the book. If you've read ‘Head Full of Ghosts', you may remember the last minute almost twist at the end and ‘The Cabin...' has a similar mechanism in the last pages. It made me consider the similarities in composition between the two books and, while they tell two different tales, there are a fair few.

In terms of rating, I find myself perhaps a little too cynical for Tremblay's books as none of the content surprises or disturbs me as the genre classifications suggests they should. It has made me wonder if the author wrote these intending to disturb or intending merely to shine a light and point out the horrible things that occur in everyday society. While I'd definitely consider reading more of his work, I shan't expect to be scared by it.

(Review also published here: https://aspectsof.me/2019/01/06/cabin-end-world-review/)

Fun, fast-paced and engaging fantasy/dystopia based on the history and culture of (primarily) the Navajo people. These are some flawed characters and the story doesn't shy away from that. Occasionally felt a little choppy in terms of the flow. Great world-building, character development, stakes and magic. I look forward to reading more from Roanhorse.

Did Murderbot just make a... friend? In as much as it can, wants or cares to.

Our anxious misanthrope of a free bot seeks out answers as to what happened to make it become Murderbot in this 2nd instalment of the series. Everything you loved about Mb in the first novella is still there now with added... hair? Thrown into the mix this time around is ART, the Asshole Research Transport Mb meets on the way to finding answers.

Once again this is a brilliantly witty and well-written story by Wells, told in a diarised style (hence the series name) from the point of view of the eponymous Murderbot. The experiences with social anxiety are cleverly done and accurate. There's not too much ‘hard science' involved in these books so if you're not a fan of that in your sci-fi then these books are definitely worth a gander. They're short, quick reads that are immense fun.