Adeline

Memoir following the author, a writer and political adviser, as she takes care of a young hare born in her country home garden during the Covid lockdown. 
This was truly a wholesome read.  The author has a lovely prose that reflects the beauty of nature and the profoundness of her experience taking care of a wild animal.    There were parts where the information felt a bit too dumped and some parts were less interesting to me but overall I think the author did mostly a good job illustrating her personal experience with more scientific facts. 
The last chapter was really emotional to read and that last sentence made me teary 🥹. 

Dystopian literary novel written in the 90s and following Lauren, an African American teenager who lives inside a gated community in California in the years 2020s, where society has all but collapsed and chaos reigns.  I was especially attracted to this book after seeing a tweet during the California fires earlier this year, showing an excerpt of the novel.  Overall this was a very good read. I loved the world building, quite prescient in anticipating many of our problems today (climate change, political and social unrest). Bleak yet ultimately hopeful, in the character's will to survive and thrive beyond the atrocities, I did like the discussion and themes developed by the author like survival, climate change, systemic and individual violence, drug addiction, racial/social inequality, government corruption, religion, reshaping god/faith etc (though it didn't particularly touched me being an atheist) etc. 
That being said, I wasn't a fan of Lauren almost “Emotionless” tone to her voice, even if it was like a reverse image of her ability as hyperempathy, the diary entries felt more like stating a list of facts and not living the situations. I also wished we saw more of her abilities during the entirety of the novel.  One of the relationship has a huge age gap that gave me the ick to be honest. 
Still I'll probably read the sequel to see how the character's story evolved. 

Historical fiction reimagining the life of the daughter of the iconic British warrior Boudicca who rebelled against the Roman Empire during Nero’s reign.

I don’t know what Elodie Harper puts into this particular book that made me devour all 472 pages in 24 hours.

Like her previous books, The Wolf Den trilogy, one of my favourite series of all time, she has such an incredible voice that makes History feel so vivid and emotional to read about.

Her characters are all so compelling, complex and real and I loved Solina whose is at the heart of this story, her resilience and strength were truly inspiring to read about. I also loved the other points of view which gave a more rounded and interesting perspective on the historical events.

Because this was a single volume, events were sometimes too compressed and I wished the story would have been lengthened into two volumes, still emotionally it still made me feel so many things.

Overall an incredible read that I absolutely inhaled, forgive me for this is a quick review, I just had to get it off my chest. I can’t wait to see what other stories will Elodie Harper tell in the future.

4.25 stars for each book. Mystery fantasy with elements of horror and romance, following a forger, a disgraced paladin and an assassin, alongside a scholar who are sent on an espionage mission to stop the terrible mechanical soldiers raging war against Dowager City. The Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine were initially written as one single story later split into two books, I’ve decided to review them together.

I loved this story, the world of the White Rat is so fun and exciting. As always T. Kingfisher does a great job balancing humour and horror, interesting mystery and compelling characters. I loved Slate and Caliban (which I now realised was referred to in the Saint of Steel series), particularly but all the characters were great.

Despite my enjoyment there was a difference in tone and pacing between the two books. It was a bit jarring, as the first was fast paced and adventurous while the second was much slower and reflective (too much sometimes). So I’m not sure about splitting the story in two books was it, but maybe a single long novel wouldn’t have made it better. So overall, the pacing wasn’t perfect. There was also a couple of plot elements that I wanted to see more developed or that were rushed a bit.

This was the first books written in the world of the white Rat so technically I’ve read all of the published works and I can’t wait to read the upcoming books in that series.

4.5 stars

Speculative dystopian (but ultimately prescient) literary fiction, where an isolated Californian town in the mountains is transformed by a strange sleeping virus that progressively contaminates thousands of its inhabitants.

My second book from Karen Thompson Walker this was yet again a phenomenal read. Like her previous book I read (The strange case of Jane O), I absolutely love her writing so lush and hypnotic, with the eerie atmosphere of a town hit by an epidemic perfectly captured.

I liked the speculative elements were being speckled throughout the narrative, and how the author approached various themes on love, family, survival, community, individualism, dreams, reality, etc This was definitely more character centric than plot centric, as we see different characters point of views. Some of the storylines I connect more than others and there a couple of characters’ arcs that I felt was rushed a bit too quickly. I don’t mind the open ending (very realistic) but I felt the pacing was a bit off towards the last few chapters.

This was published in 2019, so reading this in a post Covid world felt weirdly prescient as the author described events and behaviours that actually happened in real life, and this experience is even more strange because it kind of parallels the thematics and speculative elements developed in the book.

This is a book that doesn’t have all the answers in a neat package so ultimately it will influence your enjoyment. Overall a perfect read for people who love gorgeously written speculative fiction, specifically light sci-fi, I’m looking forward to Karen Thompson Walker future books.