Review – Ambush at Still Lake

Posted August 9, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Ambush at Still Lake

Ambush at Still Lake

by Caroline Bird

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 83
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Caroline Bird's new poems show us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending. This is a collection about marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery in which a recurring dream is playing out: a world where mums impale themselves on pogo-sticks, serial killers rattle around in basements, baby monitors are haunted by someone else's baby and, through it all, love stays and stays like a stationary rollercoaster that turns out to be the scariest, most thrilling ride in the amusement park.

I admit to mostly picking up Caroline Bird’s Ambush at Still Lake for the pulpy cover, when browsing the National Poetry Library’s collection via random tags. Her editor’s reaction does sum things up pretty well:  “It is bleak, repellent and hilarious in an American Psycho-ish way. Hectic and vivid.”

I wasn’t a huge fan overall, though I recognised the poems as well written and well structured. Some of the ideas behind them are clever, a little amusing, but I just didn’t enjoy the grotesquerie of some of them, like the woman swallowing her kid’s toys and the descriptions of all that…

Not a collection for me, but I still find the pulpy cover amusing, and there were a few poems that did speak to me.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Dressing the Queen

Posted August 9, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Dressing the Queen

Dressing the Queen: Two Hundred Years of Makers and Monarchy

by Kate Strasdin

Genres: Fashion, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 328
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The hidden story of the people who designed, sewed, stitched and steamed the clothes of Britain's queens, from Victoria to the present day.

From tours and walkabouts to the dazzling spectacle of a wedding or Coronation, the clothes worn by royal women have always been a fascination. Starting with Queen Victoria and moving to the modern Elizabethan age, DRESSING THE QUEEN shows the incredible craftmanship and painstaking effort that go into the making of what is known as the ‘Royal Wardrobe’, from handmade boots to Crown Jewels; country tweeds to delicate stockings.

Dress historian Kate Strasdin reveals a tribe of previously unsung women and men. Some may be more renowned – such as designer Norman Hartnell or suitcase-maker Louis Vuitton – but most are ordinary, highly talented working people from across the British Isles. From rural straw plaiters to wartime coat-makers and refugee glovers, their skilled labour is a vital part of our country’s history.

As we see modern princesses sally forth in fantastically arranged ensembles, we can think again of the vanishing trades that once employed millions – and still remain integral to royal life today.

Kate Strasdin’s Dressing the Queen is not about the fashions royal women have worn, per se, or even their personal styles — though inevitably it does reflect on that somewhat. Instead, it’s very much as the subtitle suggests: “Two Hundred Years of Makers and Monarchy”, with heavy emphasis on the makers. Strasdin attempts to figure out the craftspeople behind royalty’s clothes: not just the designers, or the heads of companies, though she discusses them, but also the people who did the stitching and fitting, who knitted the stockings, and even made the luggage used to transport it all. We also get a peek at laundering, repairing and managing all those clothes.

There were loads of little snippets that I loved learning about: the rushed order for a funeral pall, completed in 28 hours by a rotating group of women who swapped in and out as needed; the dress designed to hang beautifully on the changing body of Queen Alexandra as she developed curvature of the spine, the story only really considered now when dressing mannequins in her clothes to display them and finding that the fit seems outright bad.

It steers away from anything too jingoistic about the royal family, focusing very much on the stories of those who served them, though it isn’t outright critical either (and tends to focus on how warm and human several members of the royal family were with tradespeople)… so I didn’t find it too annoying, despite not being a royal fan. I thought it was important and lovely to unearth these people, some of whom Strasdin finds photographs or videos of, and put stories and names to the faces.

Sometimes it’s hampered a bit by silence, either due to something just being too commonplace (stockings) or too intimate (corsets and underwear) for much to have made it into the meticulous records of the royal family. Still, Strasdin does a good job of speculating and drawing out the details that she can.

All in all, I found it very enjoyable!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 8, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

Happy weekend! I had a bit of a bleh week, so I’m determined to fill the weekend with joy, books, and video games.

Books acquired this week

First up, and somewhat inevitably, I really, really needed book three after finishing book two, so I snagged the next volume of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine…

Cover of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 3 by Liu Gou Hua

I’ve already plunged in, of course! I’m going to be so sad, having to wait until November for volume four… but I hear in this volume some of the slow burn pays off.

I did also borrow two poetry collections from the National Poetry Library, so here those are:

Cover of My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards Cover of Bondo by Menna Elfyn

And that’s it for this week, since I’m still very much in “reading the backlog” mode to try to make space for birthday books. (Not so much physical space, there’s still plenty, but given I limit the number of books I can buy in the current year without starting them.)

Posts from this week

As ever, let’s do a bit of a roundup of my posts from the week. It’s been another busy one!

First, the book reviews:

As ever, three stars isn’t a bad rating, and I didn’t read these books this week. I wrote the reviews weeks/months ago when I read the books, but spread out when I post them to give a variety. If you want to check out what I’ve been reading this week, it’s the next section below!

And non-review posts:

What I’m reading

It’s been a quieter week reading-wise than I’d expected/intended, given the bleh feeling… but oh well! I was also working on ongoing reads of some slow-paced non-fiction, so it’s not as “bad” as it looks, even though three of these are very short. Here are the books I’ve finished this week:

Cover of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 2 by Liu Gou Hua Cover of Bondo by Menna Elfyn Cover of My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards Cover of Brimstone Slipstream by Matt Weber

As for this weekend, as usual I have many plans involving reading some manga, finishing volume three of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, finishing the non-fiction I’m reading, etc. Game-wise, I’m planning to finish Whisper of the House, which is a cute game combining Unpacking-style organisation and some exploration… and of course, play some Final Fantasy XIV.

But in the end, it’ll be wherever my whim takes me, of course!

Hope everyone else has had a good week.

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.

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Review – The Magic-Lantern Murders

Posted August 7, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Magic-Lantern Murders

The Magic-Lantern Murders

by Carter Dickson, John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 269
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

On the eve of his wedding to Evelyn Cheyne, who he met and fell in love with during the course of The Unicorn Murders, former spy Kenwood Blake is summoned to Devon by spymaster Sir Henry Merrivale, and asked to take part in an undercover operation. Despite being assured he’ll be back in London in time for the wedding the following morning, Blake is unconvinced.

Once in Torquay, he is sent to investigate Paul Hogenauer, a local scientist of German heritage, who has been dabbling in spiritualism and the occult – a man Merrivale and Devon’s Chief Constable Colonel Charters suspect of anti-British espionage. But, on entering his house, he finds Hogenauer dead in a chair in his sitting room, showing all the signs of strychnine poisoning.

When he finds Hogenauer’s friend and confidant Dr Keppel dead in his hotel room in Bristol, also apparently from strychnine poisoning, he has a seemingly impossible mystery to unravel. Can he solve the clues, bring the killer to justice and still get to the church in time to get married in the morning?

After a while, and a few false starts, I did get into some of Carter Dickson AKA John Dickson Carr’s work, but it transpires I haven’t wholly lost my distaste for them. This is one of the Henry Merrivale ones, which are already not my favourites, and my best description of it while reading was that I felt like the soundtrack should be “Yakety Sax”. Coincidences (the worst possible ones for the protagonist) abound, sometimes for the mystery and sometimes for comic effect, and the whole thing is spent running up and down the country chasing will-o-the-wisps.

It perhaps doesn’t help that I don’t find Kenwood Blake that enticing as a character: spending The Unicorn Murders with him was quite enough, thank you. I wouldn’t have minded a bit more focus on Evelyn Cheyne, but she’s just “the wench”, convenient for bringing along a change of clothes and sounding the alert, it seems. Bah.

At least I liked Stone, even though that took a while to solidify for me: he seems a good man.

I am very wary of this kind of ending, as well — I shan’t say too much about it because of spoilers, but I don’t like it when detectives take the law into their own hands, and I especially didn’t like how it was played here.

Overall, not one I can recommend, even though aspects of the mystery were interesting (if you stripped back some of the Yakety Sax moments).

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Book Blogger Hop: Writer, Reader, Editor?

Posted August 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

A banner for a "Book Blogger Hop", with a photo of a bunny wearing glasses and its paws on a book

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 whether you’re a writer:

Do you see yourself more as an editor, a writer, or just a reader?

Setting aside the work I do on this blog (which involves all three, heh), I’m mostly a reader, but I do write as well — even discounting my blogging and the writing I do for my various clients, and my two dissertations (I believe that’s “theses”, in US terms — they were for my MA and BSc), I write stories, usually just for myself (though I have been known to write and post fanfiction when the mood strikes). I’ve also done some science communication writing, but again, informally.

have done some formal editing work, editing dissertations and theses for people who don’t speak English as a first language. My favourite was on Cappadocian cave churches!

But mostly, I’m “just” a reader with a blog and a backlog of books that’d make a pile so tall it probably is worthy of being called “mount TBR”.

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Review – Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 1

Posted August 6, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 1

Mistakenly Saving the Villain

by Feng Yu Nie

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 298
Series: Mistakenly Saving the Villain #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A mission gone wrong and a villain in need of serious therapy await in this heart-rending drama—finally available in English!

When medical student Song Qingshi dies and wakes up in a historical fantasy novel, he’s tasked with rescuing the tragic protagonist from a life of misery. There’s just one problem—he has no idea who the protagonist is.

Instead of saving the hero, Song Qingshi accidentally rescues Yue Wuhuan, an enslaved man renowned for his striking beauty and trained in the art of seduction. Now determined to help his traumatized new patient heal, Song Qingshi offers everything he can: Medicine, therapy, emotional support, even a shared bed—strictly for his patient’s well-being, of course.

But Yue Wuhuan wants more than healing. He wants revenge. And most of all, he wants Song Qingshi all to himself.

As enemies close in—and even heaven itself turns against them—Song Qingshi isn’t trying to change the story. He’s just trying to save the one person who needs him most.

Volume one of Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain sets up a pretty fun scenario: a young man (a former medical student) who has died of motor neurone disease ends up transmigrating into the world of a novel, tasked with saving the protagonist….

Problem is, he isn’t genre-savvy at all, and ends up saving a man intended to be a minor antagonist at most, who should have simply died earlier in the story. Without knowing that, and committed to “getting a good grade”, Song Qingshi settles into his new role, blending modern medicine with the cultivation world’s techniques to try to nurse Yue Wuhuan back to health.

The two of them get close as Song Qingshi tries to heal him, but it’s slow going because Yue Wuhuan has suffered a lot of trauma, and has both physical and psychological healing to do. Progress is hindered by Song Qingshi’s friend, An Long, who seems to have ulterior motives, and by the fact that Yue Wuhuan considers himself dirty and tainted from all that has happened to him, and holds back information from Song Qingshi in order to avoid frightening/upsetting him.

It’s fairly dark, due to the aforementioned trauma, and Yue Wuhuan isn’t a straightforwardly good guy: he can be, for Song Qingshi, and he was certainly deeply, deeply wronged… but he’s more than a little unhinged. Mind you, Song Qingshi matches that energy, going to absurd lengths to protect and defend Yue Wuhuan. I enjoy both of them greatly, despite Yue Wuhuan’s sometimes erratic behaviour.

Despite that dark background, it all goes past quite lightly because there’s a touch of humour to it through Song Qingshi’s misunderstandings. I found it a lot of fun to read, and because I happen to know a couple of spoilers due to people comparing it to the love story of Heaven Official’s Blessing, I’m very curious how that’s all going to connect up.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – A Palace Near the Wind

Posted August 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – A Palace Near the Wind

A Palace Near the Wind

by Ai Jiang

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 185
Series: Natural Engines #1
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Sometimes called Wind Walkers for their ability to command the wind, unlike their human rulers, the Feng people have bark faces, carved limbs, arms of braided branches, and hair of needle threads. Bound by duty and tradition, Liu Lufeng, the eldest princess of the Feng royalty, is the next bride to the human king. The negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop the expansion of the humans so that the Feng can keep their lands, people, and culture intact. As the eldest, Lufeng should be the next in line to lead the people of Feng, and in the past, that made her sisters disposable. Thankful that her youngest sister, Chuiliu, is too young for a sacrificial marriage, she steps in with plans to kill the king to finally stop the marriages.

But when she starts to uncover the truth about her peoples' origins and realizes Chuiliu will never be safe from the humans, she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.

A powerfully imaginative, compelling story of a young woman seeking to save her family and her home, as well as a devastating meditation on the destruction of the natural world for the sake of an industrial future.

I hadn’t heard anything about Ai Jiang’s A Palace Near the Wind before I picked it up, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I thought the early descriptions of the Feng people and their lives seemed intriguing, and a novella tends to be readable even if I end up not liking it.

Buuut despite being a novella, I found it really dragged. There’s a fascinating world here that’s sadly under-explained: I get that the main character doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but the stuff she did understand/believe wasn’t clear enough to me. Things like… why does Lufeng want her sisters back so badly if they didn’t actually like her? Why were they ‘sacrificed’ and she was held back, only to be sent now as the story opens? How does her body work, what does she look like? If even I wanted a bit more of that kind of detail, as someone who can’t picture anything, I imagine it must stand out a lot more to people trying to form a mental picture.

The main problem was really that nothing could shock or surprise me, because I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t get emotional about anything because I didn’t really have a stake in it. There’s a lot here, but it’s like viewing it through smudged smoky glass: it’s hard to grasp what’s actually happening and what it means.

I don’t think I’ll read the follow-up, personally; I found it a struggle to get through this novella, so I don’t think it’d be a good use of my time to try to read more, even if it contains answers to some of my questions.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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WWW Wednesday

Posted August 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Cover of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 2 by Liu Gou HuaWhat have you recently finished reading?

Yesterday I read two poetry collections, Menna Elfyn’s Bondo and Jonathan Edwards’ My Family and Other Superheroes. The former was really good, but I was less of a fan of the latter.

Before that, the last thing I finished was volume two of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I love a lot more than I expected. I instantly whimpered for volume three… which I have duly started.

Cover of Rummage by Emily CockayneWhat are you currently reading?

First and foremost, volume three of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine! I’m going to be so sad when I get to the end of this volume and have to wait until 10th November for the last one. This really worked for my mood at the moment; I’m loving the slow burn.

Other than that, I’ve also started two non-fiction books which are slower going: Emily Cockayne’s Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go and Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering. Both are alright, but not proving to be compulsive reads for me.

Cover of The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John WiswellWhat will you be reading next?

Last week I ended up abandoning what I thought was a very firm reading plan, ahaha. So I’m not sure, but in theory I want to start John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints and Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

Either/both could end up being displaced by pure whim, though.

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Review – Cat + Gamer, vol 2

Posted August 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Cat + Gamer, vol 2

Cat + Gamer

by Wataru Nadatani

Genres: Manga
Pages: 174
Series: Cat + Gamer #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A quiet office worker embraces her new role as a cat mom when she begins sharing superfluous amounts of cat photos on the internet.

Riko can’t help it—her tuxedo baby is just too cute! Will her coworkers feel the same or will it add to their bewilderment about her? At home, Riko learns more about Musubi, from favorite toys such as a free grocery bag to their shared joy of video games. And Musubi himself learns a new trick—how to tell her when it’s dinner time!

“Leveling up” in skills, surprises, and adventures extends to real life, as Riko discovers what it’s like living with a cat!

Volume two of Wataru Nadatani’s Cat + Gamer is pretty much the same as volume one: it’s cute, silly, and a little bit cringe when Riko uses gaming terms for perfectly ordinary stuff (like calling the shop assistant “shopkeeper” all the time, and then “great sage” after she gives some extra advice about how to keep a kitty happy). I know it’s meant to be silly, but it just comes across as weird, and I promise gamers can actually function in society without treating it like a video game (as we know Riko must be able to, since she functions fine at work).

I did enjoy the chapter where Riko’s sister came over and gamed with her for a bit, that was fun, and it was also kinda nice to go see more of the “shopkeeper” (did she even get a name though?!).

And of course, Musubi (the cat) is adorable.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Top Ten Tuesday: Danmei and Baihe Covers

Posted August 4, 2026 by Nicky in General / 32 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is a freebie about book covers! I decided to highlight some fun/pretty/cute danmei and baihe covers (from my collection), because I often get comments about them.

For those who don’t already know, danmei and baihe are Chinese genres which have recently-ish started being translated into English a lot. The stories focus on same-sex love, but can be all kinds of genres other than that — historical, fantastical, modern, mystery, and various mixtures of the two.

My favourite theme is honestly the covers that show the tenderness and joy the main couples share…

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation vol 5 by MXTX Cover of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol 4 by MXTX Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing vol 6 by MXTX Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 3 by Lv Ye Qian He Cover of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 3 by Xue Shan Fei Hu

Buuut it’s worth highlighting some badassery as well!

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation vol 2 by MXTX Cover of The Beauty's Blade by Feng Ren Zuo Shi Cover of Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 2 by Feng Yu Nie Cover of The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou Cover of Remnants of Filth vol 1 by Ruo Bao Bu Chi Rou

I haven’t read all of these yet (the last two are still on my TBR), but I can’t wait. And I’d love to read more baihe — I’m sad I’m only featuring one! If anyone has recommendations for baihe that’s been translated and traditionally published, I’d love to hear them.

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