Emma Goto

The Raven Tower tells the story of a god who lives in a rock. These small gods take the forms of forests, animals and other entities and are sustained by the prayers and offerings from people.

This particular god narrates its own story, as well as the story of Eolo, who visits the town of Vastai, where the Raven god lives. It's an interesting concept but also a bit tiring to read because the rock god narrates it as though it is talking to Eolo with a lot of “you did this, you did that”.

While it is quite unique, for that reason I will give it a 4/5 since it did make it feel like it was dragging a bit at times.

Sci-fi with a side of romance. Jainan's husband Taam dies in an accident, and so he is quickly married off to Taam's cousin Kiem to maintain the treaty between their two planets. Turns out it's not an accident and a murder-mystery ensues.

There's a bunch of space politics, although Jainan and Kiem are both super bad at politics and just go around revealing all their findings to anyone important (including the Emperor) which kind of seems like political suicide and/or very dangerous.

Regardless it's refreshing to be able to read a romance novel that's not completely trashy, especially in sci-fi (is it just me or is romance is more common in fantasy?) so this was a pleasant read.

I enjoyed how both the characters were kind of evil and willing to kill, although the ending turned into a sappy cringefest.

In this space fantasy novel, people belong to one of the nine Houses, which are spread out across nine different planets. The Emperor alone resides in the First House, and orders the Second through Ninth houses to send their necromancer and cavalier (the necromancer's bodyguard/swordsman) to his planet.

The Ninth House sends Harrowhark and Gideon, life-long enemies, who must work together to bring glory to the Ninth House and receive the power of immortality.

The book starts off quite slow as the author introduces Gideon and Harrow and do a bit of world-building. It's all a bit hard to get your head around what's happening but the book picks up pace once all the necromancers and their cavaliers land on the Emperor's planet.

Necromancy is spooky in general but the Ninth House takes it to the next level with skull face paint and a reputation for being super-religious. It's amusing to watch them try and interact with the more “normal” necromancers of the other Houses in comparison.

It's disappointing that Harrow and Gideon build up relationships with all the other Houses, and then they all die. Even the relationship between Gideon and Harrow, too. It makes me less interested in reading the second book. Also their deaths didn't really feel that emotionally impactful either. Maybe there wasn't enough time to properly build up that relationship between the characters.

A housekeeper picks up a sword, which turns out to contain a swordsman who is obliged to protect its wielder.

The ending was a bit cheesy but otherwise a wholesome fantasy-romance book.

The author is really good at writing about people and their relationships with others in a believable way. The ending was also very cathartic.


The part where it fell down a bit was that the entire book is leading up to a house party and wildfire in Malibu and foreshadowing something "bad" happening but it turned out to be a fairly positive ending.

A Deadly Education follows El (short for Galadriel) who is in her junior year at the magic school Sholomance. The school is a highly hazardous place. There are murderous creatures out to kill El and all her classmates, and even if you make it to graduation, there's an all-out bloodbath waiting for you when you try to leave the school grounds.

In reality this would make for a very depressing book (something like Attack on Titan comes to mind) but the book sidesteps this and it's actually more humorous than anything, because it's so absurd. The school provides spells to students in languages that they are familiar with, so El spends all her time studying different languages to try and get all the spells that she can.

I was originally a bit hesitant to read this since it's considered YA, but El is quite a flawed character and this book doesn't veer too close to the “chosen one” trope so I finished it pleasantly surprised.

The suffragette movement, except instead of just looking for equal rights, women are taking back their long-forgotten witchcraft powers as well.

This felt really empowering to read!

An east asian-inspired fantasy book, where each race has the ability to control an element - in the case of the Kaigenese (based off of the Japanese), it's the ability to wield water/ice.

The technology in the world is on par with ours (satellites, mobile phones) but for some reason the Kaigenese are very traditional and don't use any technology at all, so the book is essentially transporting you back in time a couple of hundred years.

One of the main characters, Misaki, is a housewife, with no real say in how things are run, even in her own home. Initially this sexism kind of sucks but through the course of the book you learn that Misaki is actually a badass so it's not too bad.

Overall it was a great book with a lot of character development.

My one nitpick would be I'm not a big fan of foreign words inserted into the text e.g random words like “mother” or “damnit” are translated into Japanese. Right at the end, there's a serious conversation in a formal setting, and there are full sentences written in Japanese where they're talking with slang/very casually which felt very very out of place. Just stick to English!

Similar to “Never Let Me Go”, Ishiguro likes to do this sort of vaguely dystopian sci-fi where he doesn't quite flesh out all the details.. I need answers, damnit!!

Why is Karla decommissioned but left “alive”? Wouldn't it be kinder to turn her off? And the sun is probably just a regular old sun, that Klara is mistakenly expecting to be a God that can save Josie - but then it does? Is that just a coincidence?

From the title and cover I actually thought this was some sort of YA-ish romance book (oops, probably getting confused with “the space between us”) but it's actually a decent soft sci-fi novel.

Basically they've invented travelling between parallel worlds, but the catch is you can only travel there if your counterpart in the other world is dead. Since rich people tend to be alive in most of their worlds, this means the job of travelling falls on the poor underclass.

Our main character, Cara is one such traveller. The travelling is actually for quite mundane reasons - to gather data on parallel worlds for statistical analysis and to try and make money off of it. The book isn't too heavy on sci-fi, as it more ends up being about the people that Cara meets between the different worlds, and all the ways they are different (or the same). So don't expect the author to really explain the travelling thing.

The first quarter felt really slow as the author established the character's backstory and all the supporting characters and I was half-considering giving up on it. It did pick up the pace midway for an relatively satisfying conclusion. The villain and the way the ending played out definitely had room for improvement, but just don't read too closely into it lol.

The main character was veeeeery quirky and I couldn't really deal tbh.

I enjoyed Weir's first book about a science dude on Mars, but decided to give his second one a miss after hearing lackluster reviews about his attempt at a female protagonist.

For his third book, he's gone back to his tried-and-true approach of having a science dude talk about a lot of science shit and although my eyes glaze over as all the science shit happens, it was a fun and heartwarming read.

Heartwarming isn't the first word that comes to mind when the plot centres around him waking up alone on a spaceship but it really does turn out that way, somehow.

I don't want to spoil it any more than that, so give it a read if you like sci-fi (I would love if they could turn this one into a movie too).

I love a good sci-fi novel!! The main character Mahit becomes the new ambassador for her small mining station and gets to fulfill her childhood dream of visiting the Empire. Of course there's one small problem in that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances and a bunch of politics ensue.

Even though the Empire is this overwhelming force that could at any time annex her home, I likex how it wasn't just Empire = bad and Mahit's station = good. Mahit grew up enjoying a lot of the empire's cultural exports e.g. poetry and gets to know some of its people as well through her work as an ambassador.

The other cool part about this book is the maintaining of heritage through copies of people's consciousnesss. Essentially you have a copy of the mind of your predecessor living in you, so that with each successive generation the knowledge can continue to grow and be passed down. I would love to see this concept explored more in future books.

Quick and easy read.

Wow this was a wild ride.

Props to the author for killing off a bunch of characters at the beginning (I honestly thought they were going to get resurrected, since there was a decent amount of time dedicated to them).

Then there's the usual “wow this guy is scary and bad but this quirky girl doesn't care!” And then they fall in love etc.

Tbh felt like the plot twist where Hunt was caught buying drugs came out of nowhere and it all went downhill fast from there. Not sure why Bryce was like “I'm going to do something smart” and then proceeds to try and beg to exchange his life for hers (how is that in any way smart, that is SO DUMB).

And then the final battle, it was like everyone was sitting around watching on a Zoom call as she fought Micah by herself? Like what? The battle was actually kind of cool but that really ruined it.

And then the classic “wow she actually had powers and is like the most powerful person ever!! The chosen one!!”. The end.

Really dumb, but I guess Sarah J Maas is kind of like a trashy guilty pleasure at this point lol.

Beautifully written. Twin sisters run away from their home in the South. Both are black, but one goes on to pass as a white woman while the other eventually returns to her hometown.

To be honest it initially made me question - if no one can tell the difference, why not pretend to be white when it's convenient? The book takes place in the 50s onwards where there is still segregation and a lot of discrimination e.g. can't get certain jobs.

Obviously an ignorant question, and the book does a good job of showing how the white-passing sister struggles to deal with the effects of hiding her true identity from everyone around her.

Sort-of memoir/book about the author's experiences of helping to produce a film about his life. Miller is really good at painting himself as a very ordinary guy (slightly veering into pathetic/loser territory). Apparently he's also written a bestselling book. It's almost confusing - because I couldn't see why he's famous (from the way he writes about himself), and I probably should've just read that bestseller instead of this one.

It comes across as a book for the everyday person. Miller struggles with life (and don't we all). Maybe his conversational, casual tone is what makes his writing so popular.

Unfortunately I think I'll have to give this one a 3 or 3.5. I think it is probably a lot better if you go into it with the context of knowing about the author.

About a teacher grooming his student. It was actually quite explicit which made it really hard to read. It made my skin crawl. It felt disturbingly realistic as well - apparently it's based on the author's past experiences. The ending did feel quite abrupt though.

A magazine writer is given the chance to have an exclusive interview with reclusive Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo. The question she sets out to answer - of her 7 husbands, which one did she love the most?

Don't be fooled by the Marilyn Monroe-esque cover or the story premise though - this book goes somewhere completely different.

As a fantasy-romance book with under 3000 reviews, I was definitely hesitant to give this one a go (you can't trust Goodreads ratings!!). However I was pleasantly surprised and found it to be quite well-written.

The two main characters (Stephen the paladin and a perfume-maker named Grace) manage to endearingly bumble their way into a relationship. It's quite cute, although I got tired of how many times it had to be mentioned how tall or broad shouldered the male lead was. A comfy read.

I accidentally started this book 70% of the way through (I must have accidentally tapped a chapter title from the index at the beginning and my kindle took me to it). I didn't even notice! I finished it, and thought “wow, that was so short”.

I dunno what that says about the book that I could skip most of it and not realise.

I think the ending was a bit too much “wow I'm fully cured now here I go to live happily ever after”. It didn't feel too realistic. The moral of the story is probably “the grass is always greener” and you don't realise what you have until you lose it. Yes, her brother and bestie are alive and well but is she really going to be fulfilled for the rest of her life knowing what she's missed out on?

I give this one a 3.5/5 because while it wasn't necessarily terrible, I wouldn't recommend anyone else to read it.

It tries to sort of explore the morality of self-driving cars (and who should die in case of an accident) but it felt fairly shallow. The main character gives fairly obvious arguments against the “evil” people who want autonomous cars to take over the road. I think at times the dialogue wasn't that great. The cringiest moment for me was when a social media expert walks into a courtroom and says:

“Nobody knows more about mass communication that I do. I know my machine learning from my micromoments; my conversions from my clickbait; my organic reach from my omni-channels and my big data from my business intelligence...” (He keeps going too!)

Like, who talks like that? Maybe it was on purpose to highlight how silly his character is but it just made me cringe, really.

It reminds me a lot of The Way of Kings in that the main character is an underdog from a lower “class”, who strives to become as strong as the warrior nobles (a feat considered impossible).

However, unlike TWOK it only follows one character's perspective, and he spends all his time surrounded by dudes as they train together and fight against each other. Even though their society is supposed to be matriarchal, the only evidence of that is that people take their mother's surname. Beyond that I'm not really seeing anything different and would've liked the author to explore that aspect a bit more.

I think I did feel a bit disappointed that although the women have strength (they can summon dragons) they still need to be protected by the men, and the main female characters only seem to exist as potential love interests. I've probably been spoiled by the Priory of the Orange Tree!

Nonetheless it was still an enjoyable read though, would recommend for fantasy lovers.

Kya, the “marsh girl”, grows up alone in the swamps of North Carolina in the 1950s/60s. Intertwined with her coming-of-age story is the mysterious death of the popular Chase Andrews in 1969. The jumping back between the two storylines really kept me on the edge of my seat, wanting to hear more (I listened to this one as an audiobook).

At times Kya was a bit "woe is me", "nobody loves me" even though she had multiple people around her caring for her by that point - Tate, her brother Jodie, Jumpin' and Mable. A little bit frustrating, but I guess understandable considering her circumstances.I liked the twists - Tate being taken away by the sheriffs, and then the final twist right at the end.In terms of the murder itself, I'm not sure that if it turned out that Kya was smart enough to kill someone, not leave fingerprints or any sort of evidence, and wear convincing disguises as she got on and off the bus in the middle of the night, would have just left that hat in her closet?