Remy Sharp

Didn't so much smash the patriarchy than slit it's throat and stand over it whilst it bled out!

I couldn't put this down and chomped it down in a matter of days. Great engaging and graphic writing.

The book description of a cross between Pacific Rim and Handmaid's Tale is fairly close, though in some ways I can see how this system came to be (women being treated as objects) based on our reality moreso. I suspect this is helped by the author using real Chinese history to inform characters and features of the story.

There's some pretty bleak stuff in there, and some refreshing views on relationships and status quo.

Really good stuff. Definitely reads like it would relate to the YA audience, but still very engaging for old dudes like me!

Lovely but I found the language almost too distracting.

Only right at the end of the book did I consider that maybe I really wasn't the right audience for the story - as it seemed to smack of “millennium type problems”. Using air quotes in my description because I'm fairly sure this is a patronising statement I'm making!

The Dex character feels discontent with their achievements and is struggling to find fulfilling meaning. Their work has meaning to others but they're left feeling empty. Obviously it's an impossible measure as life trondles forward and achievements change with time.

For me it was only really when Dex meets the Robot (whose name I've already forgotten) when the book became more engaging. It was like the Dex character could be challenged and some real depth was offered (for better or worse for Dex's personality).

But what I did struggle with was the language and the odd shoehorning of gender pronouns. Dex is neither “he” or “she”, so Chamber's settles with using the “they” pronoun. This led to my own confusion regularly thinking the lines I was reading was referring to Dex and another character that was in the scene.

The sore-thumb moment is when Dex asks, interestingly, what pronoun the Robot uses, and the Robot responds with “it” and it refers to itself as an object. Dex replies with (something like) they are the same, and their pronoun is “they”. This seemed like a potentially interesting exchange between the Robot and Dex about the subject of how one refers to oneself and how they identify, but it doesn't happen. It just has that exchange, and then the story returns to what they were doing and carries on. It felt jarring and like Chamber's wanted to discuss this topic, but instead shoe horned it in.

I do also suspect that my trouble with the language is a me-thing and probably with practice it won't cause me as much (or any) confusion, but for now, and this book, it definitely affected how I enjoyed the story.

I totally failed to guess the killer!

Poirot was staple TV viewing when I was a teenage so the image of the character is burned well into my consciousness (thank you David Suchet) - so reading an Agatha Christie book tends to come with very easy imagination and even accents for characters.

The story is well built, told in a way that makes me think I should have been able to deduce the killer myself (and something I've always wondered about murder mystery stories) and does a good job of flipping my expectations on its head!

Solid stuff.

Took a while to warm to the characters, but worth it in the end.

The story follows an exceptionally grumpy old lady, very much a stereotypical old person who doesn't trust anyone and exists almost just for themselves.

We also meet her grandson who is equally useless in his own ways. These two characters together made it rather difficult to want to keep reading their story, but I'm glad I did persevere.

Although the story is a little cliche, around four fifths the way through the book, it does a pretty good job to win me over to the main characters and I want to see them happy by the end of the story.

Probably a little bit too long, but worth it for the payoff at the end.

A wonderful journey into Rothfuss' world.

As part two of a three part series covering three days (one book per day), the tone and story continues brilliantly onwards from book one (which I read mid-2019).

The characters, their quirks and more importantly to me, the beautiful prose of the book came right back to life.

The book clocks in at a 1,000 pages, and though by my standard that's a (very) long book, quite often I found myself happy that I was still inside the tale and that I still had a long way to go before it would end (and I knew that the current decade wait for book three could well draw longer so I wasn't so eager to finish the book!).

For me, the enjoyment was in the storytelling and being whisked away into the world completely. I honestly did find the amount of sex in the book kind of over the top. I can buy that Kvothe is a legend character and one part of that is perhaps he has a reputation with women, but I'm not wholely sure I needed the many-month-long shagathon story when Kvothe is away with the faeries...

Still, even with this, I found myself wanting to stay in the world for as long as I could.

The very ending, like the last few pages of The Name of the Wind did surprise me a left me a little confused, but I like to think that one day The Doors of Stone will answer some of those questions...

Very brief but a good bridging story.

Far more brutal than I expected.

I'd known that Call of the Wild (and White Fang) were firm favourites of friends, and I knew they were books held in high regard - and I kind of assumed it was good for dog lovers.

I had originally thought of reading this aloud to my daughter (absolutely a dog lover) but I'm glad I didn't.

This story quickly gets to Buck being beaten, and beaten and then beaten some more. I guess the story is about finding strength when pushed to your limits, but I'm no English scholar so I could have totally missed the point!

Buck is certainly heroic (or perhaps stoic) in the face of insurmountable hardship, and perhaps this is representative of the times that London lived in?

What amazed me was, apparently, the Kindle version of the book is 45 pages - and it took me a week to read - either my page numbers are wrong or I stumbled through this book!!!

Interesting mix of ideas.

I'd read the Three Body Problem trilogy so I know that Cixin Liu's style was massive ideas of the cosmic scale and showing me how small we really are - and these short stories continue the theme.

What I didn't anticipate in these short stories was the total mix of stories (though that's entirely on me).

I didn't personally find any one story punching above the rest. I did, oddly, enjoy the story of the poet challenging the energy being and thusly breaking reality on a galactic scale.

Overall, well written, cosmic ideas, but not quite my kind of mind bending.

I'll never tire of how board the Murderbot is!

I've read every one of the Murderbot diaries and have always enjoyed the fresh take on a bot that's painted in world where people distrust them by default, and yet the Murderbot would rather avoid eye contact, shy away and watch their streaming TV series on their own.

As the books have evolved, it's fun that Murderbot knows that I'm reading their diary and often breaks the “fourth wall” to speak to us, or share how they'd much rather be doing something else.

In a way, Murderbot reminds me of many geek developers who'd rather stay indoors, hide from the sun, complain about other humans and generally prefer their own company.

After I got used to the technical aspect of the writing, a really engrossing story.

The book is written in a way that quite often ends right in the middle of a train of thought. Reading on a kindle it was hard to work out if it was intentional or if there was a problem with the Kindle edition! After a while I got used to it, and learnt to just to either let go of the sentiment or ignore it.

The story uses time jumping a lot but thankfully the book is written in a way that it was easy to know when we had jumped back or forwards through time.

The story is set in a dystopian alternative reality, which frankly isn't far from our reality now and it's easy to see how our society could get there. Which makes the entire story even more scary.

The story primarily follows Theo Miller a person who has lived in the world as it becomes worse and just gone along with it because “that's just the way the world works”.

He weighs crime for indemnity, of course rape has a power indemnity than sexual harassment (because... Men made the rules

Interesting, but found I got lost in the timeline of the story quite often.

I really wanted to enjoy Remote Control a lot more than I did. It was well written and initially the character of Fatima, aka Sankofa, aka “adopted daughter of the Angel of Death” was really interesting. I wanted to know more about them.

If I'm honest though, I completely lost track of the timeline, I think half way through the book I jumped around in time and I wasn't sure if the story was being told from the past or the present and it left me a little confused as to where the character was up to.

It was also strange (to me certainly) that Sankofa's family could be killed and they live in their mother's home whilst the mother's body is rotting (maggot detail to boot) - and yet this doesn't phase Sankofa - or at least it didn't come across to me.

Still, as I said, the story was well written and though I couldn't entire emphasis with the character, Sankofa is an interesting character all the same - even if I'm left wanting to know a lot more about them. (and like, what was the deal with the fox??!)

Surprisingly difficult to connect with.

This is still a well written, interesting, continues the Wayfarer universe and prompts some challenging thoughts.

Where I did struggle was connection with the characters. Because they're exclusively alien, and entirely so: 4 arms and a shell, tiny sloth like swinging creatures, laru furball bendy things (though I imagined the creature from Ice Age oddly enough), because they're hard to visualise in my head I found it harder to connect to the characters.

I do also suspect this is a way of putting the reader in a position of a minority, to be unable to recognise oneself amongst the peers, which is what kept flipping back and forth in my head whilst continuing with the tale.

As with other Becky Chambers' books, the story isn't some fantastical explosion of events, but a soft observation of life and interaction of species and races living together - and that's something I'll continue to love about their books.

My favourite is still the first book, I'm not sure anything is going to top that for many years, but this is still a solid entry into the Wayfarer world.

The book starts out really well and strong. Though I wasn't entirely sure who I was supposed to be plumping for, each character had their own sadness.

There's a tech background to the book that I've seen face to face, not the AI/sentient bits, but the constant tracking and the BS fobbing off that people in tech (who mostly don't understand their tech) use. Certainly for the first half of the book I found myself chuckling away.

The story and outlook is pretty bleak: all privacy lost, super corp tracks your every move and uses that information to then manipulate your decisions. Pretty much what we face today, in the early 20s, with Google and Facebook.

For me, I felt like the book started to lose it's momentum around halfway and it felt like the story was stagnating. I wasn't really sure how the antagonist actually ties up with the story, or even if indeed the were the/an antagonist.

It also felt to me like it ended abruptly without really being able to say anything. Which might be because we already like in a world where super corp does indeed hold our privacy to random and there's really no escaping it and even then in the face of criminal behaviour (see Brexit campaign and Trump) there's no recourse that the either the law can apply or society seems to want to see actioned. That's to say: it's pretty messed up.

Always lovely.

Though kinda ends about 25% short of the actual ending, then it's a little dragged out.

Many, many personal stories of Christmas, perfect for Christmas time reading even if most carry the same message: family.

I like to read a feel-good-christmas-theme book around this time and having just watched Last Christmas the movie it appeared that this book was released in relation and in aid of raising money for Crisis.

There's many very short, almost blog post in length, stories from different people ranging from well known from movies to doctors to support workers - all of which are lovely and the perfect dose of reality for Christmas.

In fact, the book has helped me put some of my own feelings towards Christmas into perspective and helped me to rethink it a little bit.

The stories do have an aspect of repetitiveness but I think that's to be expected as really the best thing about Christmas is supposed to be being surrounded by family (be it of blood or of mind).

There was also the pleasant surprise to find stories from beyond white English speaking countries and how Christmas (an ultimately Christian affair) comes into their lives. It's something I was never taught at school and (shamefully) I've never considered much before reading this book.

Yes, definitely a good Christmas lead up read to refill what Christmas means to me.

Predictable

Whilst I've come to highly respect Matt Haig and his books, even re-reading The Humans (which is unique for me), as I read this book I started to remember what I wasn't so keen on in his last book - which repeats itself in this.

The book reads like I'm watching a movie. That might be fine for some, but for me I want the written medium to challenge my imagination, not feed me visuals from a film.

The story in general is well written and is respectful of its subject: suicide. I've always been a little wary of female lead characters written by men (I've not had great experiences), but Haig does Nora Seed proud. Nora is a well rounded, messed up, individual and if I didn't have my personal dislikes for some of the story aspects or the method of story telling, I'd say this is a decent book to read on holiday (not that any of us are holidaying during the pandemic times...).

Nora Seed is depressed and lonely, and everything around her has failed in some way, and so she decides she wants to die. In her journey to death, she lands in limo, The Midnight Library, where she can (effectively) try on alternative lives where she had made a different decision and see if she would like to stay and continue that life instead.

The story inevitably leads to the idea of the multiverse but kind of does it in a half cocked way. Since Nora can switch universe and in she decides this isn't the life for her, she reverts back to midnight to reselect. This is also effectively time travel (though the book doesn't acknowledge it). So since she can time travel and jump universe, we're now talking about infinite space and time, which apparently Nora isn't allowed... it just feels a bit... like there's gaping plot holes.

But then after trying all the lives, she finds one that she believes she's happy in (which apparently the absence of anti-depressants is the main requirement) she feels guilt for having taken the place of a Nora mother and happy wife and successful educator. Inevitably she bounces back to The Midnight Library, confused, wanting, when it all comes crumbling down, she realises she wants to live. In the last desperate moments as the Midnight Library comes crashing down, she chooses her own “root life” (which also makes no sense in a multiverse) and chooses to live.

Sadly predicable. Throughout the book I didn't really feel like I was learning anything as Nora went through her journey.

Despite my lack of enjoyment from the book, one message did manage to work it's way through. Nora felt happy (and perhaps content) to know that she was capable of all the “successful” versions of herself. Though she doesn't particularly tread that path, she realises that she could have done and that notion itself is strong enough to dispell a lot (if not all) of her regrets.

A zoomed out view of the universe that Chambers' has created mostly from the human species point of view.

After reading Becky Chambers' first book I've been absolutely in love with the universe that they created.

What draws me in so much is the beautiful characters that Chambers' creates and lets us share a slice of their life.

This story starts with an event that's mentioned very much in passing in the first book about a collosal tragedy that results in the loss of one of the starships carrying the human species. That first chapter in itself is mind boggling, and the sheer tasks of collecting the bodies in space to offer the families a respectful funeral.

The story then jumps some amount of time forward (which initially I didn't realise) and we're introduced to more (I think) characters. There is also a tiny bit of connection to the first book (but sadly we don't get to revisit the original characters that I was so fond of).

For me the I struggled to keep track of the characters for around the first third of the book. I've found that Chambers' characters are drawn so vividly that this had not been a problem, but for this book I really struggled to distinguish the human characters (and I wasn't even sure if I had met them from the earlier section of the book).

Thankfully, eventually, the characters did settle out for me and I was able to tell them apart properly so I could understand who's story I was following.

As usual, the stories have a great deal of love and heart behind them and make me wish for a world like this.

It's a lovely book and story. Not my favourite of the series, but the bar was set so spectacularly high with the first it's almost impossible - that's to say that this is still a pretty darn good book on its own two feet.

Enjoyed this story - it had a lot of warmth.

I have to admit, I was fairly upset to realise that Wayfarers book 2 did not continue with the characters I'd grown to love so much from Wayfarers book 1. I'm still secretly hoping to find the crew from the Wayfarer again in another book.

This story however, picks up right after the closing events from book 1 - but instead follows Pepper and Lovelace back to Pepper's adopted world to find acceptance both within and without.

The story focuses on the two characters and bounces back and forth between the two (and along two different periods of time). I didn't find myself laughing in this book (I did in the first which is what spurred me to immediately read this and the third) but it was a touching story of individuals trying to find their place in the world and the loneliness that comes before.

In a way, I felt like the book was a pair of stories about mother and daughter - and whilst I'm neither, I found lots to relate to. And as with Chambers' first instalment of Wayfarers, I find myself wanting this future for our own humanity.

There's something both charming and utterly beautiful about the universe that Chambers has created for us. It was nice to travel to a new place and follow new characters (even though I still want to hear more about Kizzy and Jenks, and Dr Chef and Sissex - I suspect their on their own journey).

Good stuff. Very sweet. Very warm and loving story.

Nice interesting take on storytelling.

A nice sweet short story told in a really interesting way. Though I can't help but feel this was a graphic novel rather than otherwise.

Couldn't get on with this book at all.


Got 20% the way through. Didn't care for the character at all. Felt like there was inconsistencies in his behaviour and I constantly felt like the story was nonsense. This left me utterly unengaged.

A big red flag for me was when we meet the first female character who is described only as “beautiful”, “stunning”, “sexy” etc (none of the male characters are described like this), and the description and indeed the female character serves no purpose to the story. I passed over this section (around 10% in I think), but the book just didn't work for me in the slightest.

Might work for you, didn't for me. This review is for my record only.

This is the first book, that I can remember, that has made me laugh (multiple times) out loud(!) and cry. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has firmly earned itself a place in my top favourite books of all time.

—

Having finished the book only a couple of days ago, I find myself missing the characters dearly. There's so much that this story had that I hold dearly to my heart and the story is woven with kindness, love and acceptance of others.

I also loved the writing style that Becky Chambers has. I was quickly introduced not only to the characters, but to their character and it was clear what was important to them and how the characters cared about each other.

Another detail in their writing that I noticed and appreciated, was that the mundane aspects of the story, which could easily pad out a book or potentially offer a few interesting scenes - they were entirely omitted. The crew have a successful “punch” (creating a wormhole), and so they decided to head plant-side for some drinks and celebration - it's not in the book. We pick up the next morning. Back with our characters and much more interesting exchanges happen. This happened a number of times and I personally found it refreshing that the story kept me connected to the characters.

The story is set in some distant future where space is explored, species have connected and human kind have spread themselves across the galaxies. But really it's about people (I think), our connections, what makes family, what matters.

I also really enjoyed that the bulk of the crew's journey was their story and that Chambers didn't throw in unnecessary suspense or tension. For me it make the characters and the world all that more real and believable.

It was hard not to fall in love with the crew too, especially the “core crew”, comprising of Kizzy and Jenks - the techheads, Sissex the super cool reptilian pilot, Dr Chef - a chef...and a doctor, and Ashby, the kind of captain and person that stands up for their crew and conducts and behaves in a way I wish I could all the time.

Then there was the fact that Chamber's characters don't adhere to (I hate to say) “normal”. The alien species approach family and sex differently. They approach gender and identity differently. They approach food and social situations differently. They read as believable and lovable because they're not just another carbon copy of the human archetype white male hero character.

This book is full of hope and love and it was exactly what I needed in my life in 2020. I cannot wait to read the next books set in this world.

I want these characters in my life and I miss them already.

A well told tale of magic and adventure. And more of a starting point for its movie counterpart

The Stardust film is amongst one of my favourite of the modern films I've watched in my lifetime, and so I've seen the film a number of times and know it well. I was a little wary of pre-expectations but the novel did well to bring something new to the story of Stardust.

However, since the movie is so close to me, there's no other way for me to review the book other than in context of the movie (sorry to those who haven't seen or read either).

I will say I still probably enjoy the movie more (but movies are my jam and the movie got my affections first). However, the book on it's own merits is also really quite good.

The novel follows the movie (or rather the movie followed the novel) fairly closely for the 2/3rds of the story but the movie diverges significantly from the book for the ending, perhaps going for a wilder ending with more “movie going climax”. The book ends more in a way that wonders out into the sunset with a tidy, but kind, epilogue.

I can't honestly say whether the novel is split into acts (as a movie might be), but we follow Tristran Thorn as he promises to return a fallen star in exchange for “what his heart desires” of Victoria.

The prices of Stormhold are off to retrieve the topaz the 81st Lord of Stormhold threw into the night sky (inadvertently knocking Yvaine out of the sky) to claim their position on the throne of Storhold.

Whilst at the same time, The Lilim, three witches, get wind of the fallen star and send out the Witch Queen to retrieve her heart to bring them back to their young.

The story, in novel form, is a sort of travelling adventure slow moving story through the magical world of Faerie (which I'm sure I've read before in a Gaiman book...). In retrospect it does feel like some of the supporting characters are a little sidelined and certainly (probably because of the movie) expected more from the Witch Queen.

But a nicely told tale all the same (except perhaps when the Witch Queen slices off the head of a Unicorn that's already had a spike rammed through it's eye socket!).

The hate crimes make this for brutal reading, but, as always, incredible engaging.

I'm not big on book series. I'm not big on police crime novels. And yet I've read all the books that Cara Hunter has released, all of which from the same police characters and all linking to each other (although I managed to read them as 3, 2, 1, 4!).

Hunter's writing is solid, well paced and doesn't give away where it's really going to go. The characters are all well drawn and motivated and I'm looking forward to buying her 5th publication.

Perhaps because I read the Adam Fawley books in reverse order, and therefore the arcs are backwards, but “All the Rage” definitely ramps up the brutality of the crime. This book starts out with, what's suspected as a hate crime.

It's this initial hate crime that feels so ugly and disturbing that initially I wasn't so sure I was enjoying the book (or rather I might have elected to stop reading). The reason it's so disturbing is partly because of our current social climate but also because I have friends who have been at the sharp end of similar kinds of hate crimes.

I carried on and it's a good read and definitely engaging. I did also enjoy that although the main book character is (or feels like it is) Adam Fawley, there's definitely a sense that this piece belongs to the women in the story as they drive the story forward and rise up to the various challenges.

Although this story can easily stand on it's own (I mention it's a series, but there's no required reading), I do think that having more character backstory and context has helped my own engagement in these characters.

Suffice to say: good stuff. Definitely recommend if you like these types of novels.

My first Christie book, and it did not disappoint.

As kids one of my closest friends would read Agatha Christie like it was going out of fashion and I would struggle to read just a few single pages from a comic or magazine. As an adult I've finally found my way to read (using a Kindle with the right font, size and line height) and have finally entered the world of Christie.

I was quite surprised at how easy this book was to read (written in 1939), how easy it was to just keep reading and how it kept my interest. A wonderful murder mystery that initially had me guessing and unsure, then around half way decided that I knew who ‘dun it, and by 75% I was at a loss again.

The book doesn't go deeply into word prose, but keeps the pace on who would end up under the chopping block next leaving us guessing: who, when and how!

I do also wonder how much of modern day media bases it's murder mystery on Chritie's work as I could conjure up images of the characters and the scenes quite easily in my mind.

Good stuff. Will be adding some of her popular books to my reading list.

This is a hard book to read, partly for the confused start, but also the very real ending. A deep insight into clinical depression.

I have to admit that in reading this book I really struggled to enjoy it - and not because it of the nature of the book, but because it felt like I was bouncing around inside of Sylvia Plath's head in a random jumbled up, non linear fashion.

In fact, I'd say the first third of the book is almost entirely that. The mini stories that occur don't really finish, and as we were journeying through one recounted story, I'd find we'd quickly make a sharp turn and begin a new journey.

The middle third starts to become a bit more pieced together but the book was struggling to win me over. Esther Greenwood (which I'd read earlier The Bell Jar was semi-autobiographical) wanted to kill herself. The way that this third goes on read almost childish and, for my shame, I was beginning to hope the character “just get on with it”.

It was also that the first section of the book painted an extremely successful character and the character in the second part was very much the opposite end of the spectrum and the different was jarring and hard to consolidate (as a reader).

Suffice to say, she does indeed attempt suicide. For the final third of the book she is institutionalised and undergoes therapy but also electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The ECT isn't glorified nor is it vilified which was interesting and challenging (particularly with the story being semi-autobiographical).

The last third takes its time and walks gently through the journey that she takes during her institutionalised. None of this part of the book is glamourised and she doesn't make some magical recovery.

It's slow, gentle and unsure. Even as Esther finally reaches her board review to see if she can leave the institution, she herself is unconvinced that anything has changed, but something is certainly at rest in her.

The last part of the book definitely calls for reflection and helped to give me an insight into those who struggle with existing. There's rarely some grand purpose that drives them to death by suicide, and indeed in Esther's case there's nothing that particularly explain why she wanted to end her life.

There's a moment with her medical supervisor where Esther says that she hates her mother. This is after their last encounter - and her mother isn't bad in the slightest, it's that her mother wants to know what she had done wrong to have not been able to help protect her daughter from these feelings. The supervisor (slash therapist) says, “I believe you do”. She doesn't try to sympathies or give Esther another point of view. This line surprised me, in a believable way.

And as the book ends, Esther is reunited with her mother, and her mother, naively says she just wants to forget about it all and move forward from this, healthier time. To which Esther writes that her mother may want to forget and that perhaps Esther might forget those feelings:

> Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

Having dealings with depression myself, and shock grief of the worst kind, it really doesn't go away, and it isn't forgotten. It's as Plath writes: it becomes part of your landscape.

—

This is a hard book to read, partly for the confused start, but also the very real ending. Made harder by knowing that Sylvia Plath died by suicide the same year of this book's release.

Plath described the book (to her mother) as:

> a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown.

Indeed that's the experience of the last third of the book.