Review – Tigress

Posted October 26, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Tigress

by Jessica Mookherjee

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 70
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Jessica Mookherjee, highly commended in the 2017 Forward Prizes, presents her second collection of poems, Tigress. Mixing myth, magic and migration, these poems explore the impact of choice upon our lives and concentrate their magnificent, kaleidoscopic imagination on the intricate and often fraught nature of childhood and family, selfhood and womanhood.

Fierce, often funny, always charged and revealing, Mookerjee’s acute attention to detail tracks lives lived between Bengal, Wales and London. In exploring the intense displacement and loss that marks the experience of migration, the poems move into territories of danger and safety, illness and heartbreak, and ultimately into self-discovery; a rich and sensual moonlit menagerie of bears, big cats, wolves, and ‘forest mothers’. At every step, Tigress is wildly inventive, elegant and utterly distinctive.

I quite like Jessica Mookherjee’s Tigress, particularly the title poem — I saved this snippet, for example, which really jumped out for me:

Caged deep inside her chest,
she sedates it every morning and every night
before bed. Around tea-time,
her eyes flick open

as her heart-beat quickens.
[…]

Behind her husband’s back,
she plans an attack.
Until it starts to get dark. Until it’s time
to take her pills.

It helps as well that she knows Wales (I think grew up there?) and mentions places I know, little familiar things, along with the darker and sadder stuff about mental illness and family troubles. I don’t know how much of it is persona and how much is autobiography, but the poems were pretty powerful, and I like Mookherjee’s verse.

I’d definitely read more by her!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Jessica Mookherjee, poetry

Fantasy with Friends: Magical Realism

Posted October 26, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 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 whether fantasy is about magical realism:

Do you see magical realism as related to fantasy? Do you enjoy reading it? Why or why not?

I think this question means to ask about “magical realism” as in the off-brand, non-Latin American stuff that gets used to spice up literary and contemporary fiction sometimes. As far as the “original”(?) stuff goes, I don’t know a lot about the Latin American literary tradition of magical realism, and though I’ve read (and largely enjoyed) my Gabriel García Márquez, I haven’t read a lot of magical realism that actually stems from that tradition. As such, discussing that aspect would feel pretty out of my lane as a white Welsh person living in the UK and not well-versed in the tradition, even with two literature degrees.

It’s my understanding that magical realism as a tradition is considered to be separate from fantasy, anyway; what I’ve read about it and what I quickly revised about it before writing this post makes me think that that explanation is using a very specific definition of fantasy that I don’t necessarily endorse… but at the same time, “fantasy” can still be a pretty white space with a lot of baggage and assumptions, so I can understand drawing lines around magical realism to make it clear it’s something else. Plus, there’s definitely a different feel to the OG magical realism to most fantasy: magical and surreal occurrences just happen in magical realism, and the point isn’t to get to what and why, as it might be in fantasy.

There is a fair bit of magical realism that isn’t Latin American, of course, and for me that usually seems to be at the very least fantasy-adjacent. Maybe a matter of degree, sometimes; whether it’s a light touch of magic, or something that’s dug into and which the narrative tries to understand… stuff like Before the Coffee Gets Cold could arguably be called magical realism. I think that same lack of interest in understanding why the magic is happening or what the magic is doing, etc, is often the marker of something that’s more “magical realism” than “fantasy”.

And sometimes it seems like a matter of deciding what awards you want to be eligible for: the Booker prize or the Hugos, or whatever: if you want one, you’ll call it magical realism and literary fiction, and if you want the other, you’ll probably call it fantasy.

(Of course publishers are also involved there.)

I’ve enjoyed some magical realism, both the actual Latin American magical realism and the Starbucks version that’s borrowed the term, but that’s not a surprising statement to anyone who knows the range of genres I read. That said, I’m not a huge fan of postmodernism, so some of the more postmodernist writers don’t work for me.

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

Review – Servus

Posted October 25, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire

by Emma Southon

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 448
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness: we marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples. But the Romans were also enslavers. They built an empire on the backs of millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment or, simply, born enslaved.

Servus takes us into the invisible spaces of the Roman world, where millions of enslaved lives were unwillingly dedicated to the perpetuation of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman their daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses, and the miners who kept Rome a city of gold and marble, enslaved people were the bedrock of the Roman Empire. These enslaved people were ubiquitous, but silenced. Through the fragments they left behind, historian Emma Southon traces the pain and tragedy of their lives alongside the love stories, lifelong friendships, small victories and hard-won freedoms.

Servus tells the truth about the Roman empire and the unseen lives that made it so dominant.

I’ve enjoyed Emma Southon’s books on ancient Rome quite a bit, and that’s partly due to her writing style (well evidenced but fairly flippant) and partly due to her particular angle, which often focuses on women. I actually originally got Servus to review, but didn’t finish it before I lost access to the ARC, so my reading was pretty drawn out.

Which honestly helped a little in one way, because this history of slavery in the Roman Empire is really horrifying. Southon spares little detail — indeed, to the point where it begins to feel a touch fetishistic, wallowing in the misery, though I do believe that the intention is to highlight how truly awful it was and make it clear that the claims of Roman slavery being remarkably tolerable are bullshit. It definitely succeeds at that.

For me, though, the level of detail and the number of times Southon reiterated that we don’t have direct evidence but this is what slavery in America was like all sort of wore on me. There are definitely interesting things and things I didn’t know, but less so than in her other books, perhaps because I’m fairly familiar with evidence about slavery in ancient Rome and I knew very little about murder in ancient Rome or about Agrippina.

And… given the heaviness of the topic, repeatedly emphasised, sometimes the flippant tone I usually enjoy didn’t entirely work for me here.

It’s definitely a detailed look at slavery in ancient Rome, and it’s plentifully furnished with citations, but it didn’t quite hit the spot for me.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Emma Southon, history, non-fiction

Review – The Abbey Court Murders

Posted October 25, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Abbey Court Murder

by Annie Haynes

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 217
Series: Inspector Furnival #1
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
“A crime of a peculiarly mysterious nature was perpetrated some time last night in a block of flats called Abbey Court.”

Lady Judith Carew acted furtively on the night of the Denboroughs’ party. Her secret assignation at 9:30pm was a meeting to which she took a loaded revolver. The Abbey Court apartment building would play host to violent death that very night, under cover of darkness. The killer’s identity remained a mystery, though Lady Carew had a most compelling motive – and her revolver was left in the dead man’s flat…

Enter the tenacious Inspector Furnival in the first of his golden age mysteries, first published in 1923. Though there are many clues, there are just as many red herrings and the case takes numerous Christie-esque twists before the murderer can be revealed.

Annie Haynes is a writer I hadn’t come across before, so I was quite interested to read her biography. I wonder why her books were forgotten so quickly? Perhaps in part it’s to do with the fact that she got quite severely ill quite young, and spent a lot of her time housebound. I was also interested to note that she moved in with a friend, Ada Heather-Bigg, and stayed there for years as a “guest”; one is definitely tempted to speculate about a romantic relationship between the two!

In any case, despite the comparisons to Christie, I do think Haynes was a slightly better writer, though The Abbey Court Murder does have quite the share of melodrama (e.g. a child falling conveniently ill just at the moment it heightens tension, and lots of fainting and so on) — to me her characters felt a bit more real, though that’s partly because she focuses more on that than the mystery.

The mystery itself was relatively obvious from the clues, some of which I think were maybe given a little too early if it was supposed to be hanging onto the tension of what evidence might arise to exonerate the main couple. We don’t see a lot of the process of solving, so most of the tension relies on the characters waiting breathlessly, believing themselves to be doomed, and that’s helped along when there’s less explanation of the detective’s methods.

Overall, it’s not 100% to my taste, but I did enjoy it, and I’d try more of Haynes’ work!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: Annie Haynes, book reviews, books, crime, mystery

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 24, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

Oof, busy week! Shoutout to all the tech and tech-adjacent folks who had long days due to the PHP2Shell and TLS certificate security issues this week (including the friend who hosts my blog, who had to spent quite some time on it — thanks, Adam). It’s been a rough week, let’s buy ourselves some new books about it! Uh, I mean… um.

Books acquired this week

Though I joked about buying myself books about it, I thought about doing so and ended up not really able to choose — and I know my reading plate is very full for the upcoming week, if I want to finish my planned TBR for October! I did pick up a book on Kobo, because it filled a reading prompt, and another just for the October vibes:

I had to edit in the latter after posting as I’d forgotten I’d picked that up, oops! I’ve already read Domnall and the Borrowed Child, and was sadly pretty underwhelmed.

I did also learn that Susanna Clarke has a new book… and that my library had an ebook copy. So I snagged that, obviously.

And like the previous book, I’ve already read it (it’s not long), ahaha.

Posts from this week

Though it’s been busy and eventful, I’ve started to get back into my routine, so I’ve got something more like my usual number of reviews posted! As ever, here’s the round-up:

Horror: Teddy Bears Never Die, by Cho Yeeun (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Mystery: Murder in the Maze, by J.J. Connington (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Non-fiction: Egypt’s Golden Couple, by John Darnell & Colleen Darnell (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Poetry: A Man, a Woman, & A Hippopotamus, by Selima Hill (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Manga: Cat + Gamer, vol 8, by Wataru Nadatani (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
SF mystery: The Double Dorothy, by Olivia Waite (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

As ever, these aren’t the books I’ve been reading this week (see the next section), and a 3/5 star rating does really for real mean I liked the book! It might not’ve knocked my socks off, but I had a good time.

And now for the other posts:

A pretty successful week all round, despite how busy it was!

What I’m reading

The October readathon on Litsy, Haunted Shelf, has continued to have me reading so much! So here’s a sneak peek at the books I read this week. Reminder: this isn’t a recommendation, and I don’t advise you to read them just based on this post (in fact, I had a run of bad luck with several one- or two-star reads this week). Reviews will come later!

Click the thumbnails to see the full covers:

As I mentioned above, I have a lot of reading to do if I want to complete my planned Haunted Shelf TBR. I definitely want to finish Caitlin Rozakis’ Startup Hell this weekend, and probably at least one other chunkier book left from this month’s planned TBR… maybe Sara Raasch’s The Nightmare Before Kissmas?

But, as ever, it will be down to my whim in the end; I am really not into turning reading into an obligation, so I’ll only keep to my TBR as long as it’s fun! I am also eyeing some non-TBR books like Auralee Wallace’s The Haunted Librarian and Emmeline Duncan’s Chaos at the Lazy Bones Book Shop, which seem well-suited to the season… and I’d love to read more of the manga The Summer Hikaru Died, which is surprisingly tender and sad for also being horror.

Later in the week I’ll probably be reading Cherie Priest’s The Toll, which I somehow never got to when it came out, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things, likewise. I also have Deena Helm’s Our Cut of Salt, which I’m fairly determined to get to this month.

Whatever I read, you can be sure it’ll keep me busy, ahaha.

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 – The Double Dorothy

Posted October 23, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Double Dorothy

by Olivia Waite

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Science Fiction
Pages: 112
Series: Dorothy Gentleman #3
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in the third entry of this cozy sci-fi mystery series, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.

As the Fairweather approaches the halfway point of its journey, Dorothy Gentleman may have reached the end of hers…

It’s been a long lifetime, and Dorothy’s current body is on its last legs. With a new terminal diagnosis from Medical, she’s counting the days until her next reembodiment. But then a young man with someone else’s face sits down and claims he is Dorothy’s next embodiment — someone has triggered the system early, using the memory-book Dorothy last updated over a month ago.

Meaning that according to the laws, when Dorothy dies this time — it will be permanent.

Now Dorothy and her doppelganger must sift through that last month of memories, looking for a secret someone’s trying to erase. And all the threads lead back to the very first murder that happened on the Fairweather, five hundred years ago. A case which remains unsolved — and in which Dorothy was a witness, not a detective. All while an old enemy finally dares to step out of the shadows…

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Olivia Waite’s The Double Dorothy is the third book of the series, and she’s certainly not happy to simply relax into things: this book introduces another new character, of a sort, because Dorothy’s been re-embodied while still alive — in the body of a young man — presumably because of something she’s learned since her last memory book update. The two Dorothys have got to work out what that is exactly, and also deal with the whole problem of having two of them alive at the same time.

In the process, we learn a little more about the embarkation of the ship, the first murder that occurred on board, and yes, finally, a significant amount more about Violet. All in all, it kept adding stuff to the world and was a really fun read.

I think there are some problems it didn’t really reckon with — look away if you don’t want any spoilers, though I’ll try to keep things general! — like the fact that “Uncle Dorothy” was going around in the body of another person, which is briefly alluded to as a logistical problem, but handwaved in the denouement, despite the fact that his fingerprints will be identical to those of the other version of that body. Or like the fact that Uncle Dorothy is also attracted to Violet, and has much more recent memories with her than with Celia… but also any gender dysphoria that they might feel is fairly handwaved, even though they reference finding it weird to be taller than usual.

I get that that isn’t super cosy, but given that gender and sex are a big deal to many, many people, it felt weird to have both Celia and Uncle Dorothy handwaving it, without a larger previous context of people just choosing to try out other bodies and everyone being blasé about it (unless it was there previously and I missed it?). It’d make a certain amount of sense, but then I’m a bit confused about Dorothy having been so thrown by Gloria’s body in the first book.

Anyway, I don’t want that to overshadow the fact that I really enjoyed this — I think I might’ve read it faster than either of the previous books! It was definitely enjoyable, and I’m curious what happens with “Uncle Dorothy” in future books.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery, Olivia Waite, SF/F

Book Blogger Hop: Creepiest Book That Isn’t Horror

Posted October 23, 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 creepy books:

What’s the creepiest book you’ve read that isn’t officially horror, but gave you chills?

Alan Garner’s The Owl Service immediately comes to mind. It’s a children’s book (allegedly) and marketed generally as fantasy, but it’s full of real menace. It plays with the Welsh story of Blodeuwedd, with the story replaying itself with an unwilling cast, playing with tensions between English and Welsh, between classes, etc.

The cover on the edition I had (included in this post) was kinda creepy too…

I think it was actually Garner’s Elidor that really freaked me out, but I’ve never reread that one. I reread The Owl Service as an adult and… yep, still powerful and creepy. And recommended!

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

Review – Cat + Gamer, vol 8

Posted October 22, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cat + Gamer

by Wataru Nadatani

Genres: Manga
Pages: 160
Series: Cat + Gamer #8
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Office worker Riko Kozakura lives to play video games, but her life changes forever when she adopts a kitten! Soon, she has two playful cats and takes lessons from video games to help raise them.

Riko Kozakura has been level grinding as a pet owner for a while now, and has learned many new skills. Life continues in the Kozakura household with two cats and one videogaming-obsessed human in this finale to the popular manga series! “Leveling up” in skills, surprises, and adventures, Riko discovers how to adjust her apartment and daily habits for two cats!

I can’t believe volume 8 of Cat + Gamer ends the series! It seems like one that could go on forever — but then, maybe that’s why it’s a good thing that it ends, rather than spinning out the idea into infinity and maybe getting a bit (whisper it) boring/repetitive.

Volume 8 is more of the same sort of story, but features Riko making some big life decisions… with some help (comically, as you’d expect) from the cats. There are other aspects of it, like the cats getting a spa day, and Riko playing along with cat trends… but it also draws the series to a close in a way, though I won’t spoiler.

I did wonder… Riko’s fairly openly talking about the cats in the office in this volume. When did she stop being worried about her coworkers working out that she was the author of the kitty account posting Musubi pictures?! That feels like it just faded out. Or did I miss something…?

Anyway, still cute/silly, and I’ll kinda miss the series, even if it’s very simple.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, manga, Wataru Nadatani

WWW Wednesday

Posted October 22, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I read was, uhhh… right, Delilah S. Dawson’s Bloom: slow-burn sapphic romance turns horror. The ending is genuinely horrific; it feels like a jump-scare out of nowhere after the dreamy atmosphere of the first half, though is definitely foreshadowed in a couple ways. I need to write my review of it; I had criticisms, but overall had fun.

What are you currently reading?

I’m partway through Caitlin Rozakis’ Startup Hell, but not very far into it, so it’s hard to say exactly what I think so far!

I’m also reading John Wiswell’s Wearing the Lion, which I think I mentioned last week… and honestly, I’m not far into that either, and I’m still not sure I like it. Might be a case of “not for me, DNF”.

What will you be reading next?

No idea, honestly. Maybe a reread of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, on something of a whim and because it meets the criteria for a reading challenge (and the sequel meets a different prompt in the same challenge). I remember liking the two books, but some of the details have faded, so it might be nice to refresh.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – A Man, A Woman & A Hippopotamus

Posted October 21, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

A Man, A Woman & A Hippopotamus

by Selima Hill

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 269
Rating:

Synopsis:
Selima Hill’s twenty-second collection A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus presents ten sequences of short poems, prose poems and short pieces on relationships and doings between people, animals and the world at large.

I borrowed Selima Hill’s A Man, A Woman, & A Hippopotamus from the library pretty much just because of the title (and cover), I must admit. I really wanted to know what the hippo had to do with anything. In the end, I’m not much the wiser: the poems are very small fragments, and it’s not clear to me that they were meant to be connected or build on each other much.

There were some interesting images/fragments, and it’s not that I thought the writing was bad, it’s more that I just didn’t find the very disconnected/fragmentary nature of it very engaging or enjoyable.

I don’t think I’m totally put off Selima Hill’s work; I’d be game to try something else! But if it’s all like this, perhaps it’s just not for me.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, poetry, Selima Hill