Fantasy with Friends: Over the Years

Posted October 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Monday means Fantasy with Friends time! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantasy as a genre over the years:

How do you think the fantasy genre has changed over the years? Is there a particular time period of fantasy writing that you particularly enjoy?

I have a pretty good knowledge of some genres/eras within certain genres because I studied them, so I’m a bit scared of this question: it’s not really my area at all! I haven’t brought a lot of my academic practice to the fantasy genre at all, and it feels like my personal knowledge is coloured as much by just growing up and the natural change/growth in my interests as by real trends and changes.

Obviously there’s stuff like the rise of cosy fantasy and romantasy (though there were low-stakes fantasies before the trend, and plenty of romance in fantasy before it became a named subgenre), and the grimdark fantasy that came some years before it — but I think that it’s probably much like fashion, and some things go around and come back in later.

I can’t think of really good rigorous examples, but I also think there are things my generation loved at children that are surfacing in adult fiction. I haven’t thought this through on a serious level, but… is dark academia in fantasy perhaps a response (at least for some of us) to the magical school we may’ve loved as kids, and what’s become of that for many of us? And even if we didn’t love it, was it popular enough to weave its way though our psyches and shape what we want to write and read about anyway? I think it’s likely.

Anyway, to the point about what we enjoy, I really enjoy a lot of cosy fantasy and romantasy: there’s plenty of it that feels a bit cookie-cutter, or not polished, or naive, but that’s the nature of any trend. Standalone books are also a joy — I don’t know if I’m right that there’s been more of that and fewer automatic trilogies, though. But I’m also a fan of older fantasies like Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry, Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn… they really had a lot to sink your teeth into. Long story short, perhaps I’m easy to please.

Overall, probably an unsatisfying answer, I’m afraid; I don’t think about things this way, it seems! At least when it comes to fantasy, unless it’s related to Tolkien or Arthuriana, I think I’ve kept my academic life out of it — helped by the fact that I finished my MA over a decade ago now, and switched away from the arts to science for a while.

Tags: books, discussion, Fantasy with Friends, SF/F

Review – Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs To Die

Posted October 4, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die

by Greer Stothers

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 383
Rating:

Synopsis:
In this hilarious, off-the-wall queer fantasy romance, a reclusive sorcerer is forced to protect a cowardly knight after a prophecy ties their fates together.

Funny, touching and inventive, this book is perfect for fans of A Marvellous Light and Dreadful.

All his life, Sir Cameron has tried to stay as far away from danger as possible. But when the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights predicting that the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron, he finds himself in a situation too sticky for even his considerable wiles. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer.

Merulo isn't thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but fate has tied them together. And transmogrifying Cameron into a vulture is at least a great source of entertainment. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he's really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?

As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, led by an angry concussed elf—which definitely isn't in any way Cameron's fault—the sorcerer's poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he's also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if their hobby is trying to kill God.

Even if it might get you killed, too.

I was quite interested in Greer Stothers’ Apparently, Sir Cameron Has To Die from early buzz, though I think the summary I read is not the one on the back cover or the current one on store-fronts: I’d probably have known it almost certainly wasn’t for me if I’d seen it referred to as “hilarious” and “off-the-wall”. That’s really the primary problem with this book for me: I bounced off fairly early on because it’s trying so hard to be funny, and the scatological humour actually isn’t the height of wit that it seems to think it is.

Before we go on, it’s my understanding that I need to point out that I’m writing this review for other readers, not to target Stothers, because apparently they’ve been posting bad reviews on their Tumblr and responding to them. I have found no direct evidence of this myself, but I also haven’t looked for long, and I can definitely tell that Stothers is Very Extremely Tumblr so it doesn’t… surprise me.

I also had some issues with Sir Cameron’s anxiety being treated as a joke and as cowardice. I know that’s the character’s and world’s framing, not the author’s (necessarily), but it just crosses a personal line. Being afraid of dying isn’t cowardice. Wanting to avoid fighting in a war isn’t, in fact, unreasonable (though unless I missed it, I think there was no real explanation there as to why Sir Cameron is a knight at all given he doesn’t want to fight). It was… unpleasant, to read that constantly being viewed as just cowardice, even given the bounds of the setting.

Then there’s everything pointed out in other reviews: weird gender essentialism, unnecessary fetishism about women’s bodies, utter disgust and horror about menstruation, Glenda the cartoon-level bigot who we are forced to spend a fair bit of time with, the “tawny-skinned” female character with her “wild” hair and bulging muscles, attitudes toward disability (and assistive technology)…

And on top of all that, there is zero (zero) chemistry between the characters, even in scenes where the author firmly wants us to believe there is. It’s just awkward and out of the blue.

In fairness, some of this is a “your mileage may vary” sort of thing depending on how you feel about some story/setting choices, some of it is well-intentioned, and I think some of it is just accidental… but the sum of all those parts is not (for me) an enjoyable read, and I definitely understand that it feels like the author is, whether blunderingly or deliberately and with whatever motives, engaging in bigoted stereotypes.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Greer Stothers, romance, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

I’m a bit late to write this post today because I’m a creature of infinite distraction, after a long week. But here I am!

Books acquired this week

This week I haven’t got anything new (thank goodness, since I’ve been doing plenty of that, ahaha), but I did get a couple of poetry collections from the National Poetry Library:

I’ve read both already, but I do want to page back through and re-read some of the poems in each before I write my review.

Posts from this week

As ever, here are the posts from this week, reviews first!

Crime: The Rasp, by Philip MacDonald (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go, by Emily Cockayne (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Poetry: A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Graphic novel: Paper Planes, by Jennie Wood et al (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

I meant to post a review a day as usual, but life kept getting on top of me. The same drill as always: these aren’t necessarily recent reads, because I have all my reviews pre-written and then arrange my posting schedule for variety, and please do take my ratings literally: when I say 3/5 stars means I liked it, I’m saying I liked it, not that it was disappointing or whatever it is you mean when you give something three stars! 🙂

As for the other posts this week:

I’ve developed some tricks to make posting my monthly wrap-ups a bit faster, this month — thanks to my wife helping me set up a tracking spreadsheet, instead of just winging it and counting at the end of the month!

What I’m reading

It’s been a busy week for reading, particularly since the Haunted Shelf readathon has now started! I’ve been participating in a lot of the games on the Litsy and in the Discord, but also getting a fair bit of reading done. Here’s a peek at the books I’ve finished since my last post (click to embiggen to see the details properly if the thumbnail cuts it off too much!):

For this weekend, I’m digging into Rachel Harrison’s book of short stories, Bad Dolls, and then… I’m not sure. I’ve set up a solid TBR for the month, so I’ll pick something off there, or go totally by whim. Whatever works!

Through the rest of the week, it’ll be much the same theme: probably more of Rachel Harrison’s work, and maybe getting started on The Library After Dark, by Ande Pliego, which has been tempting me since I picked up a copy. Murders in a library, irresistible.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Paper Planes

Posted October 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Paper Planes

by Jennie Wood, Dozerdraws, Micah Myers

Genres: Graphic Novels
Pages: 216
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
After a life altering incident, Dylan and Leighton are sent to a summer camp for troubled youth. Can Dylan and Leighton save their friendship and protect their future while trying to survive camp?

Former best friends Dylan Render and Leighton Worthington attempt to successfully navigate their way through a summer camp for troubled youth. They both need a good evaluation at the camp. Otherwise, they’ll be sent away, unable to attend high school with their friends. While participating in camp activities and chores, Dylan and Leighton rexamine the events that led up to the incident that sent them to camp, the incident that threatens their futures and their friendship with each other.

Jennie Wood’s Paper Planes was a bit of a random choice for me, something about the cover design and learning it was a queer story with an asexual character made it seem like it might be my thing. It’s YA, but I tolerate that better in graphic novel form, and with queer stories (which often play out similarly for adults, let’s be real).

Leighton and Dylan are sent to a camp as punishment for some kind of big deal situation where they both got in trouble, and over the course of the story we slowly learn how they became friends, what their friendship is like, and what it is exactly that they did. It’s a very messy teenage story, with bullies and stupid crushes and mismatched expectations about what a kiss means, and it doesn’t end in a neat and tidy way.

My main problem with it was that Leighton is not a likeable person a lot of the time, neither in the past nor the present. She’s deeply privileged and expects to get what she wants for the most part, though has major angst about her parents’ expectations and demands on her. This would be easier to sympathise with if she treated the people around her (including Dylan) a lot better. It’s not clear why they’re friends, really. Even in the present timeline, when we find out why Leighton’s behaving the way she is… it’s hard to entirely sympathise with the way she goes about it and the mixed signals she gives. (If you can’t be friends with Dylan anymore, stop throwing paper planes at them and trying to separate them from others who might be their friend.)

Dylan’s treated more sympathetically for the most part, though it doesn’t help that it’s unclear why they’re so attached to Leighton.

Overall, messy and teenage in a way that’s pretty realistic, but not the most enjoyable thing to me. I did find it interesting that it doesn’t neatly sort things out at the end: there are loose ends, and while Dylan’s settling in and looking a bit happier, it’s unclear that much is changing for Leighton. That makes it pretty realistic.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Dozerdraws, graphic novels, Jennie Wood, Micah Myers

Book Blogger Hop: Biggest Fear

Posted October 2, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about fears:

As a book lover, what’s your biggest fear?

On the personal level, that my house will burn down. So many books, and I don’t know if they can all be reasonably replaced, including ones with sentimental value like one of the books I wrote my dissertation on. It’s weirdly expensive to get hold of now, and there’s no ebook edition in sight.

As a book blogger, I fear saying or doing something stupid that hurts people. I try to listen and be careful around sensitive topics and experiences I don’t share, and at the very least to make my good will and good intent clear so that people feel they can tell me if I’m doing something hurtful… but I’m still concerned that at some point I’ll mess up.

On a sort of medium level, I’m scared of the indie bookshops I love disappearing, things going more offline, etc. At the moment, the trend isn’t pointing that way in the UK, and people are passionately protecting the bookshops they love. But there was a time with fewer indie bookshops, and it’s possible — even likely — that there will be again, or at least that the specific bookshops I love will close, as these things wax and wane.

On a macro level, it’s a worry that the rise of generative AI may make it hard to trust and enjoy new books. I’m in that position with gaming, where several times I’ve been burned by fun-looking games which turn out to be AI slop, and by games I’ve enjoyed later adding slop and ruining the experience. I’d truly hate to become as distrustful of the books on the shelves as I am of the games coming up on my wishlist. There’s no way that will be good for books and reading, and people outsourcing their brains and creativity to regurgitated rubbish viscerally offend me.

I also fear the tend toward censorship and away from diverse books, because it’s a symptom of rising fascism. I’m not often vocally political here on my blog, but knowing the impact of section 28 (including on bookshops, as Gay’s the Word suffered police persecution about selling queer books even though section 28 only applied to local government), I deeply fear the direction of the new guidance for schools on talking about trans people, and how it and other similar measures around the world will affect the books available to people.

Given the topics of this post, I’m gonna quickly point toward two of my blog policies to avoid any unpleasantness or confusion: AI policy and commenting policy.

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

Review – A Thousand Mornings

Posted October 2, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 5 Comments

A Thousand Mornings

by Mary Oliver

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 82
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Mary Oliver is beautifully open to the teachings contained within the smallest of moments. In A Thousand Mornings she explores, with startling clarity, humour and kindness, the mysteries of our daily experience.

I think A Thousand Mornings is my least favourite of Mary Oliver’s collections that I’ve read so far. It retains that strong sense of joy and wonder in the world that I enjoy about her work, so there’s that, but I didn’t connect with the individual poems as strongly as I’d hoped to.

I think… partly it felt too short? With a few more poems, a bit more chance to get my teeth into it, maybe I’d have gelled with it better? But it’s hard to say; you can only go on what’s there, and it didn’t sing to me the way I’d hoped.

I do love her work so much in general, though. The sense of love and joy in the whole world is palpable, and always enjoyable; she had such a gift for joy.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Mary Oliver, poetry

September Reading Wrap-Up

Posted October 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 15 Comments

September saw the temperatures here finally cooling down, and the world going a bit greener again… just in time for autumn to hit as the leaves start browning. I do enjoy autumn, though!

September in general:

It was a busy month for work once more, but hopefully that’s drawing to a close now… but other than that, it’s been a pretty quiet month with a lot of mood reading. Some energy has been spent on getting my ebike spruced up so I can ride again, after a year where I kept off it for fear of re-injuring my wrist (which is pretty much healed now unless I really try to hurt it).

I’ve been doing a lot of crochet, and have added two entire “shelves” to my bookcase blanket since the last update photo:

I’m pretty happy about the way it’s coming out. I have one more “shelf” to do, and then provided it’s the length I wanted (which I think it should be), I’ll be working on the border. That’s quite a hefty task, with some fiddly bits, but it encloses all the raw ends, so there’s almost no weaving in of ends to be done.

Gaming-wise, the big headline of the month is Dressmaker, which is really cute, has a fun story, and involves a lot of design work on pretty dresses. There are some weird requests, but for the most part I’ve just been able to create some really fun things, and there’s a reasonable degree of realism to the game. Definitely recommended. Other than that, it’s been a fairly quiet month for gaming, but I did finish A Building Full of Cats 2 and pick up Flats Full of Cats, both of which are the usual Devcats “hidden cats” fun (and Flats Full of Cats has a bunch of free levels).

Finally, my group did see the end of M12S in Final Fantasy XIV, and knocked out our ten clears for the achievement too.

That means a break from raiding for a while, though we intend to revisit M8S (from the previous set of raids) if possible, since not everyone got the mount from that before we switched to the new raids.

Reading stats:

Total books read: 23
Total pages read:
Rereads: 0
ARCs: 1
Series finished/up to date: 2
Books owned pre-2026: 3
Books owned from 2026: 10
Borrowed books: 11

Fiction: 18
Non-fiction: 4
Poetry: 1
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 3

I read a little more this month, and it’s probably fair to say it’s got a lot to do with just reading by whim. Getting the game Dressmaker definitely led to me reading a bit less than I might’ve, but it was still a solid month.

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books: 239/300 (14 books ahead)
Overall pages read: 57,638/75,000 (1,337 pages ahead)
Books read from backlog: 35/50 (2 books behind)
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 37/40

I haven’t made great headway against the overflow of books I permitted myself for my birthday… but you know what, that’s okay. Clearly it’s not the season of my life to focus on that. I would like to avoid having a net gain in number of unread books for the year as a whole, so I’ll work out what’s to be done there. Overall, though, lowering my goals and relaxing my limits has made things feel better all round, so I don’t regret it… even if I cherish secret hopes of somehow hitting my original 400-book goal anyway.

Blogging stats:

Views: 11.2k (down)
Visitors: 10.2k (down)
Likes: 396 (down)
Comments: 377 (down)
Reviews: 25
Other posts: 24

A quiet month, overall, but it started picking up toward the end. Maybe everyone’s settling back into the routine after summer holidays…?

Most viewed posts:

Top Ten Tuesday: British Library Crime Classics (59 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Welsh Books (46 views)
Book Blogger Hop: Overlooked Book (36 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Fall 2026 TBR (36 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’ve Met (31 views)

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

From Books, Bones & Buffy: SHE’S A DOLL by Barbara Truelove, by Tammy
From Books, Bones & Buffy: KISS SLAY REPLAY by Rachel Harrison, by Tammy
From Becky’s Book Blog: Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison – ARC Review! by Becky
From Foxes and Fairy Tales: ARC Review: Strange Cases, by Louise
From Books, Bones & Buffy: NEWBOURNE PARK by Jennifer Thorne, by Tammy
From Reactor: Finding Your Recipe for Literary Comfort Food, by Molly Templeton
From Becky’s Book Blog: Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske – ARC Review! by Becky
From The Guardian: The New Dark Ages by James Marriott review, by Anthony Cummins
From The Bibliosanctum: Book Review: The Court of Venus by Bel Banta, by Mogsy

It felt like it was a pretty quiet month on my blog, with views, visitors and comment numbers all down… I wonder if the back-to-school season was keeping people too busy, compared to the lazy days of summer? Or maybe everyone’s been snatching last-minute holidays!

Regardless, I think it’s been a pretty good month.

Tags: books, monthly wrapup

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 30, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

What have you recently finished?

I actually finished a book this morning, since I was giving myself a lie-in after working extra hard earlier in the week. I’d started on Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time last night, and was fascinated to see where she took it exactly. I can see why it’s such a classic. Obviously she’s very much on the Ricardian side of the mystery (which centres on whether Richard III killed the princes in the Tower, if you don’t know the book — an injured policeman finds himself curious about it while bored with an injury and decides to investigate) and quite biased — but I did actually think it was quite a fun book, all round.

What are you currently reading?

I’m about 30% of the way through Juliet E. McKenna’s The Green Man’s Heir, and currently feeling pretty unsure about it. It’s a bit… oversexed? I feel like I’m reading a teenage boy describing women, yeesh. I think it’s partly a character thing, rather than the author, and that’s… fine up to a point, but I’m not sure I’m going to want to keep spending time with this character.

On the other hand, I know a lot of readers I trust enjoy the series, so I’m giving it a solid chance.

What will you be reading next?

I’m grabbing a book from my backlog which I suspect might not be for me, Craig Rice’s The Sunday Pigeon Murders. It’s adjacent to my interests, being a mystery from 1942, but it’s American rather than British, and sounds like it leans into a part of the genre that I generally don’t enjoy. We’ll see, but it might be a DNF.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Fall Covers

Posted September 29, 2026 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is a fall freebie, and it’s been a while since I looked at book covers… so I’m going to dig out some fall-themed covers to enjoy! Some of these are set in fall or around Halloween, or have creepy Halloween-y vibes; some are just orange/red colours.

Bit of a random mix, and not all books I’ve necessarily loved, but I enjoy the colours and had fun getting a chance to really look at and think about book covers again — it’s been a while!

I know there’s another cover-themed prompt coming up, so let’s hope I can pick different covers for that one, hehe.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Rummage

Posted September 28, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Rummage: A History of the Things We have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go

by Emily Cockayne

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 304
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
Rummage tells the overlooked story of our throwaway past. Emily Cockayne extracts glittering gems from the rubbish pile of centuries past and introduces us to the visionaries, crooks and everyday do-gooders who have shaped the material world we live in today - like the fancy ladies of the First World War who turned dog hair into yarn, or the Victorian gentlemen selling pianofortes made from papier-mâché, or the hapless public servants coaxing people into giving up their railings for the greater good.

In this original and fascinating new history, Cockayne illuminates our relationship to our rubbish: from the simple question of how we reuse and recycle things (and which is better), to all the weird and wonderful ways it's been done in the past. She exposes the hidden work (often done by women) that has gone into shaping the world for each future generation, and she shows what lessons can be drawn from the past to address urgent questions of our waste today.

Emily Cockayne’s book Rummage is all about the recycling and reuse of items, some of them items that we don’t recycle now — sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. It’s organised a bit oddly, to my mind, with discussion of the World Wars early on and going backward in time to discuss the Victorian period, ultimately getting as far back as the 1630s. It never gets to properly discussing modern recycling, though it’s referenced now and again, which felt like a serious lack to me, because it would be a very useful comparison point, and there’s lots to be said about it.

It’s all a bit dense, rich with examples but not exactly scintillating reading. I did enjoy learning about some random weird new facts, like a kind of plastic made using slaughterhouse blood, “bois durci”… but mostly I think I got a bit lost in the detail.

I did also find some of the author’s interjections/commentary a bit… childish? Unnecessary? I think it’s meant to lighten up the tone a bit and make it feel chattier, but it just… doesn’t get there.

If you’re fascinated by the history of reuse and recycling, I think there’s plenty here to interest you, but it is a bit of a slow one.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Emily Cockayne, history, non-fiction