Mandy

3.5* rounded down to 3*. This was a fun little story that packs supernatural entities, a mystery, and some exorcism action. The only reason why I would rate this a little lower than the other short stories in the series is because it seemed to be a standalone side adventure rather than as a piece of the overarching puzzle. It didn't seem to have a sense of awe that pervades the other stories, but that might be due to the lack of Angels in this one. Nevertheless, it was still pretty fun in itself.Agent Hamed, from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, is sent in with new recruit Agent Onsi to investigate a report of a haunting taking place in one of Cairo's tram cars. They run around Cairo trying to figure out the identity of this phantom, with the aid of enigmatic waitress Abla.If you aren't already familiar with the Dead Djinn Universe, this series takes place in an AU fantasy steampunk version of Egypt in the 1930s or so. It's spectacular and refreshing. All the characters are Egyptian, a good number of them are Muslim, and even the fantasy aspects of this series takes a lot of cues from Middle Eastern mythology and Islamic lore. This series already gets bonus points for being so refreshingly different from ye olde conventional Euro-centric fantasy stories.I particularly enjoyed the dynamics between Agent Hamed and Agent Onsi. It starts off first as that of an unwilling mentor tutoring an overenthusiastic but inexperienced junior, but later develops into a mutually respectful partnership. I'm slated to read the latest book of the series very soon and hope very much that we see more of them.There was a whole plot thread here about a suffragette movement happening in Cairo, and the book seemed to want to do something with it but it wasn't really clear (to me) what that was. This thread was also pretty deliberately interwoven through the main sequence of events, with our two agents in the forefront trying to solve the problem of the haunting, and concludes just as the investigation does, so I'm pretty sure Clark is trying to draw some kind of parallel here - I just can't figure out what!This is a fun addition to the Dead Djinn Universe, but I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point. Rather, [b:A Dead Djinn in Cairo 29635542 A Dead Djinn in Cairo P. Djèlí Clark https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459173382l/29635542.SX50.jpg 49993780] did a better and more impressive job overall in introducing the world, the setting, and the range of supernatural entities that is at the series's forefront (I'm particularly thinking of Angels, which interest me the most in the whole series, even more than djinns despite the series title).

3.75* rounded up to 4*. Overall a fun read with a great premise that I'm interested in exploring in future instalments of the series, although the book starts a little slow and I can see the writing style and pacing not being to everyone's tastes.

As the series title suggests, we are reading the memoirs of a Lady Trent, an elderly lady who has made her name in natural history, specifically studying dragons, in her storied life. The first book in this instalment starts from her childhood and through to an expedition she undertakes as a married 19 year old accompanying her husband who is similarly passionate about natural history as herself.

The starting of the book meanders a little and it is not until about the halfway mark of the book that the action begins picking up and where the central hook of the story is established (with the introduction of Zhagrit Mat). Before this, however, you're pretty much slowly getting to know Isabella and how she managed to (sort of) reconcile her unladylike love for natural history and dragons with what society expects from her. The first half is where I would expect most people might stumble and DNF, but I do think the second half packs enough to redeem the book.

The world and premise is where this book really shines, in my opinion, with its interesting combination of historical fiction and fantasy. This was marketed as “Jane Austen meets dragons” and honestly, that checks out. The world is in a sort-of 19th century AU; Isabella as a teenager is expected to put herself out on the marriage market, attend balls, be a lady, etc. The social norms she needs to conform to are not unlike what you might read in a Jane Austen novel, or any novel of manners. The difference is, of course, the introduction of dragons being a very real and very wild animal found only in certain countries. Isabella's country of residence in this novel, Scirland, is a thinly-veiled adjacent for England. Similarly, Vystrani, the country that she later travels to in search of dragons is easily recognisable as an adjacent for Russia, with its icy climates, the names of its people (Dagmira, Ritelkin, Iosif). Much more interesting are the religions mentioned in this book. Isabella tells us that Scirland (England) are Magisterial, while those in Vystrani (Russia) are temple-worshippers, perhaps a parallel to Orthodoxy. We only get a glimpse of both religions in this book, but the elderly Isabella writing this book gives us scintillating hints that she would eventually have cause to re-evaluate her opinions and beliefs on these religions in her later adventures.

One of the bright points of this book is in the perspective. As mentioned earlier, this is written as the memoirs of an elderly Isabella looking back on her life and telling it in chronological order. Although most of the book is told in a fairly straightforward and linear timeline, where we follow Isabella from childhood up to adolescence, there are moments where our actual narrator, the elderly Isabella, breaks in to talk about how things have changed since then. Sometimes, she does so to talk about how natural history has evolved and expanded since, and how much more the present world now knew about dragons than they had back when she was a teenager. What was far more intriguing is when she breaks in to deprecate herself, her thoughts and worldview as a young person who is only just on her first adventure away from home, and how much more she has expanded her thoughts and opinions since then. I loved how this signified a larger and more complete story - how did 19 year old Isabella change, and what has she gone through between where we are reading to the person writing these memoirs?

Overall, I'd recommend this for those who are comfortable reading with classic literature and who also love a dash of fantasy and dragons in their story. If you enjoyed this, I'd also recommend reading Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody series, which also has a spunky female lead from the Victorian era going against the norms of her society to gain expertise in a field traditionally not open to ladies - Egyptology in the abovementioned series. I might also mention that Amelia Peabody is told with a lot more humour and dry wit than this one, which is personally more up my alley. Nevertheless, A Natural History of Dragons has definitely captured my interest and I'm looking forward to reading more.

This was beautifully written with a recognisable “mystery” that isn't super twisty, but executed well so it was still a joy to read. I can't tell how this relates to [b:A Dead Djinn in Cairo|29635542|A Dead Djinn in Cairo|P. Djèlí Clark|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459173382l/29635542._SX50_.jpg|49993780], though. I don't think I recall any angels named Seeker in it, nor any characters named Aisha or Aliaa? I'm certainly continuing this series.

3.75* rounded up. This is not so much a random number. The book was more enjoyable and enthralling than a 3.5* read, but also, I think, not quite as polished as I'd expect a 4* read to be.

An homage to slasher films with some fairly sensitive social commentary on the side, this book was a fun and engaging ride that keot me guessing till the end. It wasn't so much horror though, probably more like a chick lit-style thriller. Don't get me wrong, there were graphic bits but compared to some of the truly triggering books I've read in recent times, this book was fairly tame in that department.

The Final Girl Support Group is a therapy circle for Final Girls: the one girl left standing at the end of a massacre by a deranged mass murderer and who often is the one who kills him in order to save herself. Lynnette Tarkington is one of the six Final Girls in this group. She has lived the past 16 years of her life in paranoia, afraid that history is going to repeat itself or that old ghosts from her past are going to revisit her. Then, it feels like someone is plucking off each of the six Final Girls one by one, and wants them all dead.

Lynnette is not an endearing narrator, and shows very early on that she's not a reliable one either. I felt sorry for her but I never liked her, and her perspective sure as hell kept me guessing. In that sense, Hendrix wrote her masterfully, casually playing with the reader's trust in a first person narrator, pushing and pulling us by turns to and away from Lynnette. I just wish that more was said about the mental health conditions that Lynnette clearly has. The ending of the book wasn't rushed in its plot but it certainly gave an unsatisfactory conclusion to how Lynnette managed to improve her mental health, like "getting shot at in the head" was all she needed to get at least significantly better.

Of all the other characters, my heart went out the most to Dani and Michelle. We are introduced to Dani's story in the first half of the book, how she became a Final Girl, and of all their stories, hers hit me the hardest for some reason. Similarly, of all the graphic deaths in this book, it was Michelle's quiet, long-drawn death that really punched me in the feels. Having Lynnette and co. just casually leave her body in the park and have some random old man to look after her without realising she was dead, after which he "tried to kiss her" - that was actually the hardest bit for me to read, far more so than all the massacres. I particularly liked the reflection about why pop culture and people in general are obsessed and fascinated with the fast, messy deaths but can't seem to stomach the slow, drawn-out fade.

The plot twists in this one weren't omg mind blowing but it certainly did bring me on a ride and a wild goose chase, so I'll give it that. I enjoyed the action overall, although some parts (thankfully few) felt a little unnecessarily detailed and long. Then again, I'm not one for reading overwrought action sequences so perhaps I'm not the target demographic here.

For a fairly light read, this was pretty enjoyable and fun. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys slasher films or who simply just want a good action-y thriller/mystery revolving around a somewhat interesting premise of Final Girls.

It's hard for me to give this book anything else but a 5 star review. What an amazing experience. What a masterful crafting of prose and wordplay and layers and layers of meaning. What a beautiful, solid, and concise plot. It's a pretty short, quick read but this book doesn't waste a single page or word. To really summarise the story, this is basically about time travelling agents from two opposing factions of a Time War, who begin to leave letters for each other through time, space, and places. They begin by taunting each other as well-matched adversaries, but it slowly morphs into something more.

Compelling hook that keeps you wanting to find out more? Check.
Unique storytelling format? Check.
Characters that you want to root for? Check.
Believable chemistry? 100% check.
Amazing world and “magic” system? Check.
Rereadability value? Check.

Personally, I found myself hooked not by the plot but by the beautiful writing from El-Mohtar and Gladstone. The prose treads a line between gorgeous and bloated, but luckily for me I found it absolutely beautiful. I appreciated the hilarious, interesting, and really intelligent wordplay. I made myself slow down to read every line and every word - something I don't do for most books that I read - just so I could see if I could catch every nudge nudge wink wink moment.

The plot and the storytelling just worked so well with each other too. If you find yourself lost with the setting and what exactly the Time War is - don't worry, you're not alone. Frankly, I even stopped bothering trying to get my bearings after a while and just went along for the ride. But I think this is also where the book becomes very re-readable. There're so many hidden details, easter eggs, and buried meanings within its prose that by Chapter 7, I already had an itch to reread the book because I felt like I was only getting the tip of the iceberg. I rarely re-read books that aren't classics, but this is definitely something that I would be super game to do so for, and I'm betting that I'd be able to learn more and more things the more times I re-read it.

Timey-wimey plots are difficult to work through and I'm not sure whether there might be some loopholes if I really think hard enough about it, but honestly Time War just does everything else so well that I don't even care anymore. I'd recommend this to just about anyone and everyone.

—–

2nd read (2023) review:

This is a re-read for me and oh boy did I love it even more. Now that I actually had a better idea of the plot, I think I had more headspace to appreciate the lovely wordplay and writing in this one instead of spending my time trying to piece things together in my head.

The writing here is exquisite, but also not for everyone - it's so polarizing that I would hesitate to give this a blanket recommendation. “My prose purples,” as Red says in one of the chapter, and indeed the writing style in this book could easily be read as purple prose. I will say, though, if one likes this type of writing, you will absolutely love how it is done here.

An important tip for anyone reading this book: don't try to make sense of the plot or the world. Instead, enjoy this book by immersing yourself in the here and now on the page. Enjoy the wordplay, the literary references, and the chemistry between the two protagonists. I know after the end of my first read-through, I couldn't give you a clear idea of the world or the backstory of the plot here - and that's OK, I still loved it all the same. Now at the end of my second read-through, I'm perhaps a little bit clearer about the backstory but I'm not too concerned about really getting it straight here. I don't feel like that's the intention of the authors.

Also just wanted to give a shout-out to the audiobook narrators, Emily Woo Zeller and Cynthia Farrell! They injected so much feeling into the reading and in a way that wasn't cringey. I was thoroughly impressed by the performances and felt like they really elevated the prose, which is saying a lot.

4.5* rounded down. This was a thoroughly enjoyable action-packed romp through a world where all the gods and magical beings of every faith and belief system exist and are able to interact with each other. This is urban fantasy, a subgenre I typically steer away from but the humour and the world it builds just hits the sweet spot that I'm already a bit of a fan.

At the center of our story in this crazy world is Atticus O'Sullivan, an ancient Druid more than two millennia old but who retains the use of his 21 year old biological body via his magic powers. He has been spending the past two thousand years evading an ancient enemy, the Celtic god of love, Aenghus Og, who may now just be catching up to him at last. At Atticus's side but no less of a star attraction of the story is Oberon, an Irish wolfhound that is able to communicate with Atticus telepathically.

Now I'm not usually a fan of talking or sentient animals in stories (outside of children's stories and fairytales) so I was a little skeptical about Oberon at first. Hearne writes Oberon convincingly and non-cringily so now I think he's the most precious, goodest boy ever and really hope he'll stay at Atticus's side for the rest of this very long series.

Atticus himself is also written fairly convincingly. He's clearly powerful and has shored up two millennia's worth of magical knowledge and it shows. At the same time, he also has the tone of someone who's seen so much shit in the world that he's long gotten past confrontation and just wants to live life as peacefully as possible while not taking things too seriously, which is a perspective absolutely up my alley.

The world is rich in this one and we are paraded with all kinds of gods and goddesses and magical beings from various cultures and belief systems. The Celtic Tuatha de Denann take center stage in the plot and have the most participants here, but we also have a more than 800 year old Indian witch, some Icelandic vampires, and a pack of werewolves. There're also brief mentions of Thor, Christianity, and Hindu gods as well

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable read that I'd recommend to just about anyone looking for something light hearted and easy to get through, especially if you're a fan of gods-centric fantasy and action. Or if you're a dog lover. Or better yet, both at once.

This isn't going to be much of a review cos I honestly don't feel like I know this book well enough to even write a fair review, despite having finished it.

I'm quite glad that Waugh wrote a preface before this book explaining his frame of mind when writing this, and what he had set out to achieve. He had written this when on medical leave in WW2, sickened by his experiences, simultaneously homesick and also jaded. He wanted to write an eulogy to the culture of the English country house and its upper classes, which he saw to be on its way to irrelevance and obscurity. This helped me put a lot of this book into context, but even then - boy, was it a difficult book to finish.

Waugh's surfeit of descriptions and narrative was probably analogous to the meaningless excesses of the English upper class, but it didn't make it any easier to get through. I nearly DNFed multiple times in the first 25%. Things got a little smoother after that when some semblance of a plot picks up, but also not by a whole lot.

I'm really on the fence about this book. On one hand, I think I have some idea of what it's trying to do in a metatextual kind of way, and I can give props to that. On the other, it was sometimes entrancing, but sometimes really a slog to get through (and that may have been intentional on the author's part - but even so). There is maybe a group of people I would recommend this to but this is far from a blanket recommendation to anyone, even if they like classic literature.

4.5*. This story was such a breath of fresh air. A steampunk fantasy AU of 1912 Cairo, Egypt, where our protagonist is a female investigator (something of a rarity in the story, apparently), where two out of the three significant characters in the story are Muslim and actually talk like Muslims, while investigating the death of a djinn. There's also a cult of people who worship the ancient Egyptian gods too, and I get a whiff of a non-heterosexual relationship possibly coming up in future instalments. Amazing.

This short story (I wouldn't even call it a novella) packed a lot of world building details and I see it as a primer for the subsequent stories in the series. The actual plot is pretty straightforward, which is fine because the intention here is clearly to immerse the reader in this incredibly rich world and lore of this universe that the author is building.

The story is available for free on Tor's website and if you're a fan of fantasy and historical fiction, there's really no reason why you shouldn't give it a go. Highly recommended!

Everything about this book was completely out of my comfort zone and not at all what I would gravitate towards, but I enjoyed it so much. The protagonist was more endearing than most other protagonists I've read, despite being part-robot. The storytelling was solid, and the plot was such a breath of fresh air. This is a 4 to 4.5* read for me, with the only thing stopping it from being a 5* simply being that I zoned out sometimes during the more sci-fi-ish bits, which was sometimes quite dense for a sci-fi layperson like me.

This is a pretty short book, but it took me probably more than half of it to figure out exactly what was going on in terms of the world, the plot, and even just the names for everything (I'm just not used to so much sci-fi and tech jargon in my books). Despite that, the book still managed to be engaging enough almost right from the start, primarily due to the the protagonist's engaging voice - it might be a Murderbot, but it's also just a really shy, introverted entity that just wants to hide behind its opaque face shield thing all day, watch the amazing amount of TV serials it's downloaded, and not have to talk to humans, especially not about its feelings. Honestly, kind of relatable.

Murderbot (it doesn't really have an actual name, so we'll just call it that) is contracted out to a group of scientists and explorers, presumably in some spacefaring civilisation. It's actually a SecUnit (a security unit) that is rented out to these expeditions to protect people from hostile alien lifeforms (or other humans, I suppose). We kinda sorta get to know the scientists in Murderbot's group and they play a big role in the actual plot of this particular story, but the book being as short as it is means that we don't get the time to actually know these characters very well. While I'd love to hear more of them in the subsequent instalments, the main attraction of the story really is Murderbot and its perspective so I wouldn't say this at all detracts from the beauty of the book.

The group and Murderbot discover another expedition of scientists brutally murdered, and then it's a rollercoaster ride from there as they try to figure out who's behind that massacre before the culprits catch up with them to do the same.

What I particularly liked about the storytelling is that, even though we get the events from Murderbot's perspective, we can't help also feeling a little distrustful of Murderbot and wondering if it might be an unreliable narrator. Does that mean I'm siding with the humans over the non-human, even though we are seeing the story through the latter's eyes? What makes Murderbot, who is only part-robot with “organic parts” (i.e. human bits, since it has an actual face and other human organs, which it is able to regenerate when injured or even regrow when it's completely blasted off), different from the augmented humans in this story, when both of them are able to access feeds and information systems presumably via their brains alone? Tl;dr this is a sci-fi story but I find that it made me ask a lot of pretty interesting questions about the nature of robots and artificial intelligence, especially when juxtaposed with human emotions. And the book didn't bald-facedly ask those questions, just set things up so that readers might be provoked into asking these for themselves. That's damn good writing there.

Overall, highly recommended for anyone, especially if you're a sci-fi fan. But even if you're like me and not familiar with sci-fi at all, this still remains a great read.

So this book was fine. Going in, I already knew I wasn't going to be the right audience for it, seeing as I was just okay with Rogerson's other book, Sorcery of Thorns. Although since I had read Sorcery of Thorns earlier and with much more hype on my part, and had then gotten disappointed, I went into this book with my expectations much more managed, which actually helped me enjoy it more.

Isobel is one of the best portrait painters in her town of Whimsy, and so she is constantly patronised by the fair folk, or fairies, who are incredibly vain and love seeing themselves represented on canvas. The relationship between fairies and humans is both mutually beneficial but also steeped in distrust. When she is approached by Rook, the autumn prince of the fairies, to paint his portrait, Isobel seems to make a grave mistake that might cost him his reputation. She is swept off by Rook to stand trial in the autumn courts but along the way face threats and dangers from unexpected quarters.

Things I liked about this book: the world, the fae, the lore and rules governing these people (they perpetually use glamour to hide their true appearances, which somehow have a lot to do with rotting wood and other plants, they cannot tell lies, they must be polite, and if someone bows or curtseys to them, they must return the favour). I'd have loved the book even more if these curious rules were further explored and explained, but alas, the book is more interested in the romance between Isobel and Rook to do that. I liked how fairies are so completely fascinated with human Craft (basically anything that creates things, like painting, cooking, tailoring) as well as their complete inability to undertake them (Rook literally almost dies when Isobel hands him a cooking pan). I liked the different fairy courts and would've loved to see more of the politicking between them.

What I didn't enjoy: I wasn't really compelled by any of the characters except perhaps the goat-kids, March and May, whom we unfortunately didn't see enough of at all. Also, interestingly, Gadfly - I called it right from the earlier chapters that he was orchestrating everything all along. Although it was the Alder King who was the main villain in the end, it was really Gadfly who was one level above that. I didn't particularly care for Isobel or Rook. Rook was wasn't too annoying, but we barely know much about him as a character/person besides whatever related romantically to Isobel. I was borderline annoyed with Isobel quite often, she seemed to flip-flop between all kinds of ideas and emotions a lot, and she was just way too dramatic about everything. Since I was annoyed to indifferent about the two main characters, it was really hard for me to get behind the romance. Furthermore, the attraction between Isobel and Rook happened too quickly for me and I just wasn't convinced by their chemistry throughout the book. The dramatic moments were really cringey for me.

Some parts in particular just felt a little laughable, such as when our two main protagonists are apparently being threatened by another character, and their only way out is to “stop loving each other” (not a quote, it's just so hilarious that I felt like I needed to quote it). There was some rationale behind it in that it was apparently against some kind of law that fairies and humans can't love each other while still remaining as both fairy and human, but man...

Whole book spoilers (and more about Gadfly): Gadfly's talent of seeing the future could've been put to way more interesting use in the plot, imo. There didn't seem to be a huge point to him having such a talent except perhaps to orchestrate the whole plot that he did, but there's so much more potential there. I had expected him to be the mastermind villain in the end (which turned out to be the Alder King) but that actually made Gadfly much more interesting. Instead of being a straight up villain, we don't really know what his true motivation is in the end. The revelation of him having "lured" Isobel and Rook to do all his dirty legwork for him as well as what he said at the end about how the spring court will hopefully get its turn ruling the fairy world one day makes me think that maybe he has a bigger plan in motion. If this book was gonna be a series, I'd expect to see Gadfly definitely play a huge sinister role at the end of it all. Even as a standalone, at least Gadfly's presence kinda makes the ending slightly greyer and more interesting than just a straight up happy ever after.I also kinda wish Isobel had been Rook's ex-girlfriend but enchanted so that her memories were altered and blocked. She thinks she's a 17 year old human girl living with her aunt, but she's actually an immortal fairy living with a jailer/caretaker whose mission it is to keep her memories from coming back for whatever reason. It'd be a lot more interesting than just a straight up "super-old immortal being kidnaps and falls in love with teenage girl" plot anyway.

Overall, this was a short and decent read. Some parts were cringey and laughable, but the world and some of its lore was pretty interesting.

This book has its flaws (and they're glaringly obvious too) but damn if the world and the magic system doesn't pull you in. In most other books displaying the storytelling problems that this one does, I'd probably have rated this much lower, if not completely DNFed long ago. Foundryside had the huge, huge advantage that it has such a compelling and fascinating world, lore, and magic system that it managed to get away with its problems and still shine.

With a tragic past behind her, Sancia Grado makes her way being a sneak thief in the seedy underbelly of Tevanne. What enables her to have survived so long and be so good at what she does are certain talents that she possesses. When she touches an object, she feels everything they do, so touching a building allows her to instantly know how many guards are positioned within it and where, and where the weaknesses in its defences are. Things go wrong in Sancia's latest job, however, where she had been instructed to steal a precious cargo from a safe. Out of curiosity, Sancia opens the parcel that she has just stolen and her life is never the same again.

Probably one of the main attractions of this book to me is the world and the magic system. Tevanne, and indeed the world that Sancia lives in, is fascinated by scriving, a process in which objects can be “re-written” to believe in a different reality from its own. Wheels can be scrived to believe they are rolling down a hill even while they are on flat ground, essentially propelling it forwards. People have also found ways to control such scrivings, thus being able to maneuver the wheels in certain directions given by a lever - essentially inventing driving by magic instead of by fuel and engine. That's really just the start of it. We learn more about this vast and complex magic system along the way, and it only gets crazier and crazier. Most stories rely on plot alone to provide a hook for readers to keep on reading until the end (and there's nothing wrong with that), but in this one I felt that, while the plot had some hook to it, the revelations of how the magic system worked also kept me going. I wanted to know more and find out more.

It's odd that in a book where there are a number of main characters running around doing things, I found myself more endeared to the number of semi-sentient inordinate objects like Clef and the Mountain in particular, but sometimes also all the random scrived objects that they talk to and befuddle. Because Tevanne is basically a shit hole of a city, it makes complete sense that all the people in it are either really jaded or really corrupted, or both. However, it doesn't make for very endearing characters that I can get attached to. The death(s) of any of the main characters may not have made me blink an eye.

A major problem of the book that was immediately obvious from the beginning chapters was Bennett's storytelling style. Instead of the classic “showing, not telling” approach, Bennett constantly adds info-dump after info-dump into his narrative. The first few chapters were a fairly obvious set-up for him to explain this world and magic system to us - it felt almost like a tutorial sequence in a video game. There were actual paragraphs where Bennett just ruminates about how Sancia's talents worked, exactly what she can sense and what she can't, and it's all done in an expository way instead of us seeing it play out in the plot or in a relevant scene. It felt a little unpolished and jarring, but Bennett had the advantage of having also built a really compelling world to distract me from those flaws.

A lot of things also happened illogically or way too conveniently. One point I noted was how Sancia, a hardened and jaded street urchin who has survived a lot of violence and treachery, also seems to scream at every thing that shocks her, even during an adrenaline-charged situation where people are firing bolts at her. That's not really how I'd expect someone whose entire means of survival is steathily infiltrating into places and stealing things to behave. I particularly had issues with the bit in Ch 26 when Sancia gets her body taken over by Clef, and he starts having a very interesting discussion with Orso about the nature of scriving, and Sancia just randomly starts fading in and out of consciousness even though there is no good reason for her to do so, and she only catches very convenient snatches of the conversation between Clef and Orso as this happens. I was so mad at this part!! Especially when she finally regains consciousness permanently just at the bit where she miraculously figured out and had to make a dramatic announcement to the party that Clef must've been a person before this. And then she never faints again even though they have a somewhat lengthy discussion about Clef's previous identity after that.

The book has a lot of flaws, and a lot of them are glaringly obvious. I wouldn't fault someone who chose to DNF because of them, especially if the world and magic system doesn't compel them. Personally though, I thoroughly enjoyed the setting so much that I was able to just glaze over the flaws (which would otherwise have driven me close to DNFing too). I'd continue the series just because I really want to know more about the lore of this world.

I went in expecting something like [b:Neverwhere 14497 Neverwhere (London Below, #1) Neil Gaiman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348747943l/14497.SX50.jpg 16534][b:Neverwhere 14497 Neverwhere (London Below, #1) Neil Gaiman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348747943l/14497.SX50.jpg 16534] but instead, this book delivered something like a mix of Harry Potter, CSI, with just the slightest touch of Gaiman.Overall, this was a really fun read with a compelling lore. The book is soaked in London/English pop culture without being obnoxiously unintelligible to anyone not from London. Some references went over my head, while I managed to catch others. The plot was overall engaging and the pacing was good throughout the book - it managed to balance setting up the world and the magic system, all of which is completely new to our protagonist, while still keeping the action of the plot ongoing at a steady pace.There were some aspects of it I didn't enjoy as much, like how male-gazey it was with the main female characters, even though our protagonist Peter Grant does not overstep boundaries and respects personal space, but his thoughts, lusty as they sometimes got, got a bit annoyingly much. Leslie and Beverly, the two main female characters, definitely have their own personalities, agency, and skills, but I didn't feel like we saw enough of that or them, since the book is told from the first-person perspective of Peter.The last third of the book got really confusing to me. I had a hard time trying to keep up with all the action and information that was coming on fast and furious. I probably got enough of a gist to vaguely understand how the story wrapped up, but if I had to explain it in detail to someone, I'd probably still be lost. I did enjoy the world, the magic system, and the lore that Aaronovitch set up though, and would still continue on the series at some point for that. I've heard that he gets better in his treatment of female characters as the series goes on, so there's that to look forward to as well.

Maybe 3 to 3.5 stars. Entertaining enough, but overall riddled with so much time-period-specific issues that are too prominent for me to sweep under the carpet while reading with my modern lenses, and everything/everyone felt like a gender-role caricature, not even just a stereotype.

d'Artagnan is a young Gascon who travels to Paris to fulfil his life's ambition - to be part of the Musketeers. Along the way, his letter of recommendation from his father to the Treville, the Captain of the Musketeers, is stolen by a mysterious man. As such, d'Artagnan is instead assigned to the King's Guards, but becomes fast friends with three musketeers that he meets and fights along the way, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Their friendship tides them over the various challenges and plots that they uncover being laid out by the Cardinal Richelieu and his own guards, who have historically been the enemies of the Musketeers.

There's really not much to say in terms of plot - everything feels rather episodic in nature (which probably makes a lot more sense given that it was serialised when originally published) and there isn't really an overarching hook to it all, except maybe a vague sense that the four friends are defending themselves against various hidden enemies.

The biggest issue when it came to reading the book was how much the characters felt like caricatures of gender stereotypes of that age. The three (or four) musketeers come across as huge tools overall. They randomly gamble precious horses and equipment away for no good reason, randomly fall in love with any pretty face and then come up with schemes to try to sleep with said women, or just spout a ton of misogynistic philosophies. In the opening few chapters, d'Artaganan was willing to duel with anyone who judged him for the colour of the horse that he sits on.

The female characters were decidedly worse, either being entirely too easily won over by a few sentences of professed love from men, and then becoming massively attached to them to the point of aiding and abetting their nefarious schemes against other people (both men and women), or being ridiculously evil and villainous. Surprisingly enough, the main villain in this story was probably one of the female characters and not, in fact, the Cardinal or Rochefort as I had gone in expecting. She is described as entirely lacking in any sort of feeling, and, of course, being only a woman, she falls back on her womanly wily ways of utilising temptation and seduction to lure all these good, honourable men to their downfalls. It's not an accident that she's compared to your classic serpent more than once.

So if it wasn't enough that I couldn't find myself rooting for any one character in the book, I also couldn't root for any relationship in the book either. Almost every romance in the book is extra-marital and almost always founded on either insta-lust or avarice, in the case of Porthos sticking with his (married) mistress for the sake of accessing her husband's riches. Of course, the narrative points out and laughs at this said mistress for being old (50+ years old) and not handsome, and she is described as being a complete sucker for Porthos.

Possibly the main relationship of the book, d'Artagnan's love for Mme. Bonacieux, the young wife of a middle-aged mercer, is founded on a classic “love at first sight” moment. Aside from perhaps two or three meetings in which they barely spend any time getting to know each other, they barely meet for most of the book, but yet so much of the plot is driven by their “relationship” which is hard to believe. It also makes it hard to root for when, throughout this time, d'Artagnan isn't impervious to the charms of other women, and actively courts and sleeps with them. It is only when he realises that his other amours aren't quite who they seemed they were that he suddenly recalls his love for Mme. Bonacieux.

I can't help comparing this book with the Count of Monte Cristo, which was the first Dumas I read and not too long ago. While I thought there had been problems with female characters in COMC, it wasn't quite as bad as in this one. I get that this was all written in the 1840s and I generally try to close one or even both eyes to these time-specific issues (which I did for COMC in rating it 5 stars), but the ones in this book were really hard to ignore for some reason. Further, I felt like COMC had an overarching plot that I could get really invested in and every chapter felt like a purposeful step towards an ending that I was really interested in witnessing. This wasn't the case for The Three Musketeers though, which felt like episodic adventures of four man-boys.

I had so much more fun with this than I expected to from an urban fantasy. I've been subtly steering away from that sub-genre for a while now because I've recently read a few duds that didn't work out for me, but Hearne's humour and writing style just made it work.

Al MacBharrais is a Glaswegian sigil agent in his 60s just wanting to train a good apprentice up to mastership level so that he can retire and enjoy his life. His latest apprentice unfortunately dies in yet another freak accident (choking on a raisin scone), making him the latest of seven apprentices to have met premature ends. Add to that the fact that this latest apprentice seems to have been using sigil magic for nefarious purposes, Al knows that he needs to undo this mess threatening the precarious barrier between humanity and the Faeries. He is joined by a smart-talking, Shakespeare-watching, salsa-guzzling hobgoblin and an Indian goth lesbian Battleseer who doubles up as his manager and accountant (to falsify taxes, of course). There is also that inconvenient curse on Al's head that prevents him from speaking directly to people if he doesn't want them to hate his guts immediately.

If all that sounds up your alley, then you'll probably have a fun time with this one. It's got that chaotic energy a la Douglas Adams, and with an extremely healthy dose of modern technology (Al has to use text-to-speech app to communicate with almost everyone in the book just so they don't start hating him for no reason). The plot in itself isn't super convoluted or complex really, this is a book where you need to be in for the ride, the world, and the characters. That's not to say that the plot isn't good - it does leave enough of a hook for me to want to read the next instalment in the series and find out more about what's going on. But in comparison to the crazy world that we're dealing in, the plot does take a bit of a backseat.

There is also something endearing about our hero, Al. It's rare that we get a fantasy hero who is way past his physical prime, and isn't oversexed. There isn't any romance in this book at all, and it doesn't need any, IMO. Al's devotion to his late wife, who passed in an auto accident more than a decade prior, is honestly pretty sweet and a dynamic that I wish we saw more often in mainstream books these days. The hobgoblin that tags along with him, Buck Foi (yeah, make of that what you will), also had me rooting for him by the end by being wicked silly but also not in the least malicious. Rounding out the trio is Nadia, Al's manager, who won me over from the very beginning because, I mean, she's just badass AF.

The magic system in this world isn't all too complex. Sigil agents pass down the knowledge of sigil magic, which is when you draw certain patterns with specific types of ink in order to assert a magical effect. You don't need to be a magical being to perform that kind of magic, you just need to know things. I like that the five sigil agents in the world were spread out across it, with Al taking care of the European continent from Glasgow, and also a Taiwanese lady, Mei-ling, taking care of North Asia, and her erstwhile apprentice, Shu-hua, taking care of Australia. I also really liked that at some point in the book, Al explains that sigils were derived and adapted from Taoist talismans, which are an actual thing and still extremely commonly used in Chinese fantasy and wuxia novels/dramas, while also being used in Taoist rites and temples sometimes. It's a fairly unique system of magic which I enjoyed.

If there might be a flaw that I could find in this book, it might be that readers might find the world and threads of plot and magic system a bit too overwhelming. There always seems to be twenty things happening at one time, and fifty pieces of information that you need to know. I found that it wasn't a huge problem if you just didn't take the whole thing too seriously and just went along for the ride. Hearne does a good job recapping certain pieces of info if it was immediately necessary to understand a plot situation happening at that time.

Overall, a great book that I'd definitely recommend to urban fantasy fans, or those who enjoy Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I'm certainly looking forward to reading the next instalment in the series, and will also be checking out the author's other established series, the Iron Druid Chronicles, which came first in setting up the world that this one takes place in.

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

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

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

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

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

Man, I'm at a loss to know how to rate this book. I enjoyed myself so much in the first half, but the enjoyment dwindled steadily in the second half. The first half read like a silly but entertaining rom-com with so much promise for light-hearted fun and romance, but then the second half got bogged down with unnecessary melodrama and the tropes that I hate the most: noble idiocy and lack of communication.

Our heroine, Judith Law, is on her way to continue her drab genteel impoverished existence as her grandmother's companion when her public stagecoach meets with an accident. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn happens along to assist the group, and our couple form an instant and strong attraction to each other which culminates in a few nights of mutually consensual passion under false pretences. Eventually, Judith gives Rannulf the slip and continues on her way to Harewood Grange to live as the poor relation to her Aunt Effingham while waiting on her grandmother, Mrs Law. Little does she know that Rannulf was also on his way to his grandmother's estate, Grandmaison, where she is neighbours and close friends with the family at Harewood Grange. Chaos ensue.

The first half was great. I loved Judith and Rannulf immediately. I loved Judith because she wasn't a wilting flower that couldn't do or decide a thing for herself - she knew she was destined to lead a pretty boring life and wanted some adventure while she had the chance, and she wasn't afraid to take it when it presented itself to her. Of course, the part where she agrees to spend the night (and a few more) with Rannulf in the beginning does require some suspension of disbelief because obviously Regency-era ladies would generally not behave that way, but whatever. I loved that both of them lied about their identities during their first encounter, and I was excited to see how things went down when they eventually met each other again under their real names.

I loved Judith and Rannulf and their respective grandmothers, but aside from them, pretty much every side character in the book was annoying. Aunt Effingham and Julianne were your typical evil stepmother and stepsister, one being cruel and jealous, while the other was just wholly self-absorbed and narcissistic.

Even more annoying was Judith's brother, Branwell Law, who is such an archetypal well-meaning spoilt brat - the sort who just obliviously and naturally expects the world to bend over backwards for him simply because that's how the natural order of things have always been for him, simply because he is a son and is completely unaware of his own privilege. He's not exactly malicious and probably does love his sisters, but that sort of ignorance makes him even more annoying to me.

Where the book really flagged for me was the introduction of Horace Effingham, a son from Sir George Effingham's first marriage and stepson to Aunt Effingham. He is a leering lecher that really got under my skin and is actually so viscerally repulsive that his existence and machinations in the book kinda dampened my enjoyment of it somewhat.

The second half of the book was where everything started going downhill for me. It starts from the ball at Grandmaison and the discovery that Mrs Law's jewellery had been stolen. The missing Branwell is suspected and Judith is immediately taken as his accomplice because some evidence is found in her room. This was a turn for the melodramatic that I really didn't need. Then after that, Judith had to suddenly become a noble idiot and start consistently running away from everywhere. She first runs away from Harewood Grange in order to pursue her brother, only to be caught up by Rannulf who takes her to Bedwyn House in London. Then comes the very tedious and unnecessary chapters of them trying to locate Branwell in London but with no success, and then having the repulsive Horace Effingham trying time and time again to pin the burglary on Judith and Branwell simply because he was so offended that Judith had fought back against him when he attempted to rape her at Harewood Grange. After Branwell is found, obviously knowing nothing about the burglary and having actually just been attending some week-long gambling party, Judith decides to run away AGAIN, because she's just oh so much beneath Rannulf that she has to save him from the madness of proposing to her. She even tells him earlier that she doesn't love him, and that they were just lusting after each other with some liking beneath it all - even though she's already admitted to herself that she loves him.I JUST-WHY?!I hate the noble idiocy and lack of communication tropes SO MUCH.Even when Rannulf finally catches up to her at her family home and proposes to her, he basically has to list down every single thing he has done and obstacle he has overcome to convince her that their marriage is fine and he actually loves her. It never felt like Judith ever wanted to fight for this, and it was just Rannulf fighting for it all the way until Judith eventually caves. I really wanted to see two people fighting to come together, rather than just one person trying to be the noble idiot and the other one breaking that down in order to get through to them.

So, yeah, in the first half, this book would've easily been a 4, maybe 4.5 stars. But the second half was pretty disappointing to me, and knocked it down to 3 stars. I still enjoyed myself overall, but man, when I was reading the first half, my predictions of how the book was going to go down would've been so much more enjoyable than how it actually did.

A thriller revolving around quantum physics sounds completely out of whack - and in a sense, this book is just that. But it was also was way more of a page-turner than I expected and an unexpectedly easy read too.

Jason Dessen leads a pretty regular life, having a standard job as a physics professor in a college and being in a pretty happy though mundane marriage and family with his wife and son. Things get upended when he is attacked and abducted one night, rendered unconscious, and wakes up in a completely different reality from the one he had known, where his wife is not his wife and his son doesn't even exist.

I was initially a little scared at how long the first chapter ran for - a whopping 80+ ebook pages - but then I realised that so much of it was actually just one-sentence paragraphs. The writing style was rather staccato in nature, but it fit perfectly in the context of this novel, keeping up the quick pace of the action without dragging it down with unnecessarily slow moments. It was also precisely this that made the book such a page-turner for me. It was impossible to put down when something new was happening every other sentence.

Though a huge part of the book revolved around quantum physics, it probably isn't going to be difficult for a layperson to understand. The book pulls upon the concepts in quantum physics of multiverses and Schrodinger's cat, although dark matter in itself didn't actually play that big a part despite the name. It probably just made a catchier book title. I enjoyed the first half of the book immensely when they were setting up this premise, which actually had a huge potential for some great cosmic horror here, what with infinite versions of your world and yourself, how would Jason ever find his way back?

The second half kinda derailed a bit for me. I thought the fact that they could "control" the box by having an idea of what kind of world they wanted to see was a bit of a convenient plot point. It also made the middle part of the book feel a bit pointless, like when he's exploring the post-apocalyptic worlds with Amanda Lucas, and why there was a brief almost-attraction with her. Why she was even there in the first place, only to literally just disappear off stage? I also actually would've liked it more if he had gotten more and more disconnected with the reality that he had been in, and then kinda decided to live some Doctor Who lifestyle with Amanda Lucas as just being outside of all the realities. At some point I felt that Jason was starting to feel disconnected with the life he once had, and I actually would've preferred if he had gone down that route too, questioning whether the life he had had was really all that worth it.I really liked and preferred that sense of hopelessness Jason had fleetingly, where trying to find his way home home was like trying to find a grain of sand on an infinite beach. That was, I thought, the most realistic scenario considering the concepts the book was based on. I might even have preferred if Jason had simply gone mad by the end, or had decided to end his life in the box knowing that he had been cast adrift. Basically, an ending to really drive home the cosmic horror of having invented and unleashed something like the box, where you could basically get lost in all of infinity, or even just contemplating the sheer infinite versions of yourself/your universe/your decisions.

All in all though, this was a reallyyy fun and quick read, which might at least set you thinking a bit more about the possibilities of quantum physics than you bargained for.

2021 re-read: Just as delightful a read as it was the first time I read it 6 years ago. This book has the absurdity of Douglas Adams, the humour of Terry Pratchett, and with a healthy dose of classic literature references thrown into the mix. Fforde's writing style is always so engaging and easy, and I also love how short and sweet each chapter was. This book was just so easy to breeze through.

In an alternate universe where timey-wimey things happen (and where the Crimean War is still ongoing well into the 1980s), Thursday Next is a Special Operations exec - specifically in SO-27 as a LiteraTec (Literary Detective). In this world, having a stance on who really wrote Shakespeare's plays is as serious a business as a political leaning and could well get people arrested and charged. Thursday Next is called upon for help against her ex-lecturer-turned-master-villain, Acheron Hades, who is threatening beloved literary characters like Martin Chuzzlewit and, for his coup de grace, Jane Eyre.

The action is non-stop in this book. There's something happening in every chapter. There's some nugget and gem of literary humour on every page. Every character has at least an awesome name, such as Mycroft Next, Thursday's sometimes-genius uncle, and her eventual boss, Victor Analogy. Even the villain, believably threatening and sinister though he was, had some degree of charisma. “I'm not mad, I'm just differently moralled,” he quips.

The only perhaps downside that may not be everyone's cup of tea is that all the different threads that do come together in the end may be just a bit too overwhelming for some. Because this is a world very much like our own but with just tiny details that are different, a lot of readers unfamiliar with the whole history of the Crimean War and the Light Armoured Brigade might feel completely at sea. I'm one of this number, having barely any knowledge on the above, but I still found that I was able to keep up with whatever was happening as long as you don't think too hard about the timey-wimey stuff.

About the ending: I also get that the book was, in a way, supposed to slightly parallel Jane Eyre in how Thursday initially rejects Landen, but then stopped his wedding to Daisy Mutlar in the same style Jane Eyre's wedding to Rochester is interrupted, and then later on marries Landen herself. Bowden Cable, who is supposed to be a St. John Rivers parallel, initially proposes to Thursday and invites her to go with him to Ohio as his wife or assistant, to which she briefly considers - again, like Jane. However, I kinda found myself rooting for Bowden way more than Landen! For one, he certainly appears a lot more in the novel than Landen does, he does a lot more to actually support Thursday through the action of the novel, and I thought it was pretty shitty that, immediately after getting rejected by Thursday, Landen just goes ahead to propose to and very nearly goes ahead with getting married with Daisy Mutlar. Would he have just gone through with it if it hadn't been found out that she was actually already married?! I just can't get behind it tbh.

Overall, this is a huge recommendation for anyone who's a fan of Dickens, Jane Eyre, classic literature overall, and an absurd sense of humour.

This was an easy and engaging read with magic school and romance elements - but which then takes a darker and more epic turn in the second act.Vanyel Ashkevron is the odd one out in his family - he runs away from rather than allows himself to be “heroically” bullied by various teachers hired by his father, the epitome of toxic masculinity, and is this exiled to his aunt Savil's school. There he finds more appropriate education - and love. But then things don't go according to plan when Savil discovers a hidden well of previously locked abilities in Van.Van reminded me strongly of the teen angst rife in [b:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) J.K. Rowling https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546910265l/2.SX50.jpg 2809203], especially with the suffering at the hands of parental figures, and the magic school setting. I sympathized with his situation but was also ultimately fairly indifferent to Van until the second act. The character growth then started slow and didn't in fact reach any kind of peak or max potential by the end of the book - which I wasn't mad at since this is a series after all, and Van showed enough growth to give us a good taster of what was to come, without leaving him stranded with no clear path to take in subsequent instalments.While I somewhat enjoyed the relationship between Van and Lendel, I felt that more could be done in the leading-up to it. We got a lot of their chemistry and dynamics after they had reached an understanding, but not so much on how they got there. So I wasn't quite sure or convinced about why they were almost immediately attracted to each other, even to the extent of becoming Lifebound (did I remember that term correctly?) so quickly. I also don't know the mechanics and principles of becoming Lifebound as that wasn't explored in much detail in the book, but it seems pretty scary to me that you would be so inextricably bound to this person that you may not even know that well.The magic system was complex and intriguing. I'm still not sure if I completely understand all there is to know about the world or the system, which augurs well for a series. Even the last third of the book introduces to us the whole new world of Tayledras and its magic, similar but different to that learnt in Valdemar, which I suppose we will learn even more about in later books. The Tayledras strongly reminded me of the elves in Lord of the Rings, just as the Valdemar mages reminded me of the wizards in Harry Potter.More importantly, Lackey tackles a number of relevant and surprisingly modern issues in the book. Surprising because this book was, after all, published in 1989! From the very beginning up to the end, Van (and other characters like his aunt Savil and his sister Lissa) rebels against the mindless toxic masculinity in his world, which preaches that mindless war and violence was glorious and exciting simply because it was manly. There was also some exploration about the social stigmas of being homosexual, and I can see this being a great coming-of-age story to read especially for teens and young adults struggling with the same issues that Vanyel does.

Randomly picked up this book with little to no expectations because I wanted a silly formulaic palate-cleanser - and it was such a pleasant surprise to read! A very well crafted Regency romance that ticks pretty much all the right boxes while also deftly avoiding the pitfalls of having been written in the early 2000's (I'm looking at you, Bridgerton).

Kit Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, is a notorious ex-army officer determined on ruining his position and respectability in London society. In an act of defiance against his family for beginning betrothal discussions without his input, Kit decides to pre-empt them by finding a prim, proper and dullest bride he can possibly court and win amongst the ton of society. His eyes fall upon Lauren Edgeworth, recently jilted at her own wedding by her ex-fiance, and as much of an ice queen and a role model of propriety that a lady of society could be.

The two main characters here, Kit and Lauren, were actually compelling. Neither of them felt obnoxiously annoying or unrealistic. They had actual backstories and fleshed-out histories. They had actual complicated relationships with characters aside from each other, and these dynamics played a part in the overall plot and in how both of them came together in the end. Most importantly, the chemistry between Kit and Lauren wasn't instant - sure, there was a bit of insta-lust but certainly no insta-love. Balogh took her time and gave her characters space to get closer over the course of the book. Their romance felt unrushed, genuine, and - importantly - believable.

I also liked that, despite being written in 2002, a time where a lot of romance novels were still quite iffy about issues surrounding consent and an inequality of power between the couple, Balogh side-stepped these pitfalls expertly. There was clearly a conscious effort to make sure Kit and Lauren stayed equal on the playing field, and that every plot point and decision made was mutually consensual and respectful. I really appreciated that and this was what most pleasantly surprised me in the book, having read and been disappointed so many times before by other romance novels written from the same time period. From Chapter 1, we get a scene where Kit is brawling with three other men who were catcalling and harrassing a milkmaid:

“It is a simply fact of language. Yes means yes, no means no.”

Although Lauren's continued insistence on not marrying Kit by the end of her visit to Alvesley was just bordering on a little annoying and stubborn, I could sort of understand where she was coming from in that she had had her plans formed and was on the verge of accomplishing something truly out of the norm, like living as a free and single woman in Bath on her own means, beholden to no one. So when she eventually relents and agrees to marry Kit just because he tells her he loves her... it felt like it came out of nowhere? Her whole reason for not wanting to marry Kit in the first place was never explicitly about whether he loved her or not, but more because she wanted independence and freedom. So I don't know why his confession changed anything about her goals, unless she was always kinda teetering on the fence and it simply pushed her over to agree to the marriage, in which case I don't know why she didn't show more outward indecision in the first place. I think the ending would've been vastly improved if Kit had, in addition to telling her that he loved her, also explained that their marriage would not deprive her of whatever independence and freedom that she wanted, that even if they were married, she would continue to be free to set her own establishment (independent of him) in Bath if she so wanted. I don't know, something that actually acknowledged and accommodated her goal of wanting to be independent all along would've made a lot more sense to me.

This is pretty much a chick lit murder mystery with 21st century characters casually dressing up as P&P characters and with a Regency painted backdrop. Pretty mindless entertainment, but entertainment nevertheless. It's a very quick and easy read, sometimes a little silly.

The story kind of, but also kind of doesn't, follow the story of Pride & Prejudice. On one hand, it sticks to it enough that, if you're familiar with the original, a lot of character personalities and dynamics aren't out of place - and you might have some idea about the solution of the mystery pretty early on. But on the other, it does diverge enough from the source material that there is something fresh at every turn in the plot, and the complete picture of the solution probably will still catch you by surprise, so props to the author for that.

I wasn't a huge fan of the main character, Elizabeth. She came across mostly as petulant, impulsive, and sometimes “thick for a solicitor”. She rushed around blurting out unfiltered comments and remarks to every character even while she was trying to investigate the mystery on hand. She jumped to conclusions so often, and seemed to snap back at every male character in the book, “Are you telling me this because I'm a woman?!” I mean, I get that her struggles against the patriarchal society that she's in is a huge part of the plot - after all, she's been overlooked by her dad in getting an employment position in his law firm and constantly has credit stolen from her to bolster Mr Collins's career. But I found that the overcompensation with immediately accusing everyone around her of misogyny without the slightest basis was counterproductive to her cause. I varied between feeling indifferent to annoyed at her, and never really found myself rooting for her honestly.

Needless to say, the book is rife with historical inaccuracies, some of them intended (as the author acknowledged in her notes at the end of the novel) while others weren't. If you are able to put aside qualms relating to that, and go in just expecting a very, very casual modern take on P&P characters (despite being set in the Regency) romping around London solving murders, you might enjoy this. (Of course, it helps that the cover is one of the most gorgeous I've seen this year)

What a rollicking fun ride. As long as you're not going into this book expecting the Opera Ghost to be any kind of romantic anti-hero as he might sometimes be construed to be in the musical, you'd probably have a ton of fun reading this book too.

The Paris Opera House is haunted by the Opera Ghost, who asserts a reign of tyranny over the performers and management alike. He is most interested in Christine Daae, a young and orphaned opera-singer whose talent for singing blossoms under his tutelage. However, the arrival of Raoul, Vicomte de Changy and Christine's long-lost childhood sweetheart, brings the Opera Ghost into a downward spiral of jealous frenzy which leads to dark and fatal consequences for everyone involved.

I first read this book more than a decade ago and I recall vividly that I didn't like it at all. I don't know if it was because I was a much more romantic person back then, because I was much less experienced with the tone and vibe of classic literature, or because I was a lot less familiar with the musical. In any case, revisiting it this time was such a great decision - I enjoyed it so much more in my current state of mind, and it gave me a lot of insights as to how the musical was adapted as well.

In a nutshell, it seems that the musical was essentially written for Andrew Lloyd Webber to do a self-insert into the character of the Phantom. The Opera Ghost in the book (he's never directly referred to as the Phantom, at least not in the English translation) is quite clearly a psychopathic murderer and an obsessive stalker. Leroux doesn't pull the punches when it comes to depicting the OG's toxicity in all its brutal glory. The Phantom of the musical, though, is much more toned down. It also helps that he spends most of the musical looking dashing in his dress-clothes, and only needs to cover half his face - the OG in the book has to wear a full-faced mask.

I enjoyed that the Opera Ghost's relationship with Christine wasn't romanticised or glorified - he was very clearly a stalker and their relationship was very clearly toxic af. It hit differently knowing that Christine in the book was already a naturally talented singer but her grief at losing her father had temporarily impacted her singing. It was only by coincidence that the Opera Ghost found out about her backstory and immediately took the chance to make use of Christine's superstitiousness and naivete, assert himself as the “Angel of Music” and thereby gained power and control over her.

The OG in the book was quite clearly an incel and a manipulative asshole. Christine is both afraid of him, but also admires and reveres him for the music that he is able to create. She wants to leave him, but sometimes is unable to bring herself to, and sometimes is just physically forced or emotionally blackmailed to stay. Gaslighting Christine is unsurprisingly also part of the OG's repertoire as well. This book really checked all the boxes for the hallmarks of a toxic relationship. We kinda get the sense of that in the musical, but it's definitely a lot toned down - the book puts all the brutal ugliness of such a relationship on display.

Overall though, the book is much more action-packed and humourous than I recall, and the second half is virtually un-put-down-able. I couldn't stop comparing it with the musical in my mind because it still is one of my favourite musicals ever despite everything, but I don't think the book was any less than the adaptation. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who wants an entertaining 19th century French romp, or to fans of the musical who want better insights into the adaptation process.

DNFed at 45%.Too much racism, colonialism, and misogyny for my taste. The action and story wasn't super compelling either, somehow. I found [b:Journey to the Center of the Earth 32829 Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389754903l/32829.SY75.jpg 1924715] more exciting. It's not draggy per se, but I just wasn't really enjoying myself. Oh well.

A quick, light-hearted, and entertaining romp through a unique fantasy world inspired by Malaysian culture, lingo, and wuxia dramas. An easy 5 stars for me, for so many reasons.

Guet Imm accidentally incites and gets involved in a coffeehouse brawl that loses her her job as a waitress, so she decides to fall in with the gang of bandits, led by Lau Fung Cheung and Tet Sang, who had began the brawl defending her honour. She is also a votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, a nun inducted into a Buddhist-esque religious faith. Although falling in with Lau's gang had been an impulse decision, Guet Imm isn't so sure that the Goddess of her Order isn't sending her on a mission along the way.

As a Singaporean, I was already strongly impressed and pleasantly surprised in Chapter 1 of this book. For those who may not be familiar with this region of the world, Singapore and Malaysia are geographical neighbours and share a lot of history and culture - and slang. I had gone into this book expecting an East Asian/Chinese-inspired setting which would've been par for the course for such a premise. But instead, I was treated to something completely unique in all the fantasy/wuxia books I've read - and something so unexpectedly close to home.

Being ethnically Chinese, I enjoy reading East Asian or Chinese voices in literature as the closest approximation to my own lived experience. But being born and raised in South-East Asia, which has a very populous Chinese diaspora, my actual lived experience is very much different. I never expected to see anything close to that because it's so niche. Order of the Pure Moon is the first time I've ever felt seen in a fairly mainstream fantasy book that's entertaining in its own right and isn't just about history or politics. The vernacular used by the characters (the syntax and some jargon) is common in this region, known as Malaysian or Singaporean-English, and is what I use on a daily basis to everyone around me. I just never expected to read it in a book like this, wielded in dialogue by wuxia-like characters. It's an amazing feeling to finally feel like these characters are just like you and speak like you - something I had never even entertained any hopes of reading in mainstream lit.

Aside from all of this, Zen Cho builds a compelling world that's clearly inspired by an immediate post-WW2 Malaysia, with thinly veiled historical references like the Protectorate being colonial Britain, the Yamatese occupation being the Japanese Occupation, and the Reformist probably being an approximation of the Communist guerillas. The book also had a surprisingly nuanced take on LGBTQ+ characters and relationships; it never felt like the topic was shoehorned in for diversity points, or that it was put on some kind of pedestal to be objectified. Gender fluidity and identity is dealt with in a sensitive manner - it never felt like the author had an agenda to promote, but was simply put across like a matter of course, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

My only issue with the book was that the ending felt a little abrupt, although to be fair the characters' stories are unlikely to come to any final conclusion while the war in the background is still ongoing. This is one of those uncommon books where I wouldn't have minded if it had gone on for another 400 pages, or if it had developed into a whole series.

This is my very first time reading anything by Zen Cho, and I'd certainly be checking out more of her works.

McDowell has got that sweet balance between atmospheric and supernatural horror down to an art. This book kept me on the edge of my seat almost the whole way through and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The Elementals is basically architectural horror a la [b:House of Leaves 24800 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403889034l/24800.SX50.jpg 856555] meets a touch of Edgar Allan Poe and a good dash of Stephen King.The McCray and Savage families have always been inseparable - for generations, they have been neighbours in Beldame, Alabama, owning Victorian houses in the remote small peninsula that is occasionally cut off from the rest of the town by high tide. But there's also a third house next to theirs, supposedly unoccupied through the decades or centuries and now threatening to be eroded by the sand dune that has built up next to it. When the Savage matriarch, Marian Savage, passes away suddenly, the families decides to go back to Beldame to recover and pick up the pieces of their individual relationships. But the sand gets everywhere.The suspense and horror in this book was exquisite. It doesn't rely so much on jumpscare or graphic moments, but slowly builds up a creepy sense of uneasiness that something isn't quite right, before occasionally plunging you into an EEEK! moment. There were moments in this book that actually elicited a hair-raising response from me and for that, this is already a 5 star. I was even a little spooked to be reading this at 3.30am and being the last one awake in the house.At the same time, the premise of this book isn't just... ghosts. There's something a bit more complex than that, and it keeps the book fresh and interesting. There's clearly a haunted house in the book, but what exactly is haunting it? Without going too much into spoilers, I'll just say that McDowell keeps you guessing right till the end. It's an interesting concept that would certainly ruminate in my mind for a while to come.Overall, I cannot but highly recommend this book for fans of architectural and atmospheric horror, or really just anyone looking for a thoroughly spooky read.