Top Ten Tuesday: April Showers

Posted April 21, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “april showers”, with a generous range of how to interpret that: “Interpret this however you’d like: rainy day reads, books that make you cry, books that give you happy tears, books to wash away a bad reading experience, books set in rainy places, books with rain/raindrops/umbrellas on the cover, blue book covers, etc.”

I did start by looking for books with rain and umbrellas on the cover, but I ran out a bit too quickly… so let’s chat about the books I’ve been saving for a rainy day!

After Hours at Dooryard Books, by Cat Sebastian.
Technically I’ve started this, but I haven’t really properly got into it yet. Sebastian’s books have been such a treat lately that part of me keeps leaving it for when I need a good distraction — though goodness knows with how fidgety I’ve been about my reading, maybe that’s now!
Death in Daylesford, by Kerry Greenwood.
Partly it’s the fact that I want to reread the other books first, but also… there’s a limited amount of new-to-me Phryne Fisher in the world, and I’m saving it for a bit longer.
Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 1, by Feng Yu Nie.
I really wanted this one, but now that I have it, I’ve hesitated to start! I’ve heard fun things about it and the amount of yearning it contains…
At the Feet of the Sun, by Victoria Goddard.
I think I saved this one long enough that I’d have to reread The Hands of the Emperor first. Oh nooo, etc. I loved Cliopher and his growing friendship with his emperor.
The Green Man’s Heir, by Juliet McKenna.
I hear such good things about this series, but somehow I never get round to it — imagining some future time where I’ll be able to mainline the whole series or something.
Ian Fleming’s Commandos, by Nicholas Rankin.
This is a book my grandad bought me — I can’t remember why we were in WHSmiths in Caerphilly, but it was sometime in the last year before he died (so around 2011-2012), and when I showed interest in this and a book about trains, he got them for me. Since he loved James Bond and worked on the railway, it seems an appropriate pick… though I’m not sure I’d actually considered that in the moment, it was just one of those cases of my random interest landing on something. He’d probably have bought me anything I wanted; he doted on me and loved that I was going to university in Wales. He spent my first year scouring the land for book sales, and was actually a major instigator of me ending up with a backlog… which has spiralled out of control ever since. Anyway, this book’s waited on my TBR ever since, but someday I trust it’ll be the right day.
Sweet Poison, by Mary Fitt.
Or basically any other book by Mary Fitt I haven’t read yet; there’s quite a few. I really enjoyed The Banquet Ceases and (in a different way) Clues to Christabel, they’re really solid classic mysteries, and I look forward to settling in. For this one specifically, I’m also intrigued by the archaeology thread…
Draakenwood, by Jordan L. Hawk.
Hawk’s books are generally a lot of fun and quick reads, so I’d been saving this one for a time when I needed that. I’ve probably saved it so long I need to reread the other Widdershins books again. Once more I say unto you: oh noooo, how awful. 😉
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, by Toby Wilkinson.
One day I’ll need a chunky non-fiction book on one of my pet topics, and this one will still be waiting for me on that day.
The Boy in the Red Dress, by Kristin Lambert.
This one looks like a lot of fun, and every time I notice it on the shelves I think about adding it to the month’s TBR… but something tells me ‘not yet’.

Looking forward to seeing other people’s takes on this theme! Everyone’s always more inventive than me, it feels like, ahaha.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Jack on the Gallows Tree

Posted April 21, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Jack on the Gallows Tree

by Leo Bruce

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 204
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
“If Carolus Deene catches so much as a whiff of murder he will be on the scent with all the persistence and gusto of a dachshund in search of truffles.”

While Senior History Master of Queen’s School, Newminster, Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of the crimewave sweeping the seaside resorts of England, sending him to the coast to recover is too risky for the Headmaster – he will be much further from trouble in the inland spa resort of Buddington.

But before long Buddington is rocked by a twisted double-murder – two elderly women found dead on the same night at the same time, each with a white lily by their side. Perhaps things are looking up for the curious Deene?

First published in 1960, Leo Bruce’s classic mystery hums with his trademark wit and comedic flair, centred around an intelligent puzzle and a memorable cast of Buddington’s best.

I wasn’t sure if I’d like Jack on the Gallows Tree, as Leo Bruce is also the author of the Sergeant Beef stories, which I’ve never enjoyed much when I came across them in British Library Crime Classics collections. Fortunately this one is based around his other series detective, Carolus Deene, who I find more enjoyable as a character, with his sense of civic duty and the sense that he genuinely suffers strain during a case, and genuinely feels conflicted about pointing to a murderer.

In many ways it’s a pretty typical classic crime story, and I quickly figured out the motive in the same way as the character does — that part wasn’t exactly a mystery, though I think there’s a biiit of a dearth of clues pointing you to the right character (since three have motives which fit the bill). Possibly I missed something, but it felt to me like we didn’t have all the evidence until the circle of suspects was convened in classic mystery style, and then it was starting to feel a bit ponderous.

Still, I enjoyed it overall: Deene works quite well as a detective, some of the character observations are funny, along with the rather metafictional bit where Priggley tells Deene the circle-of-suspects thing is why he’s not one of Julian Symons’ top detectives. I’d definitely read more Carolus Deene books, though I still hope I won’t have to subject myself to a whole novel of Sergeant Beef.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Leo Bruce, mystery

Fantasy with Friends: Favourite Subgenres

Posted April 20, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Happy Monday! Which means it’s time for the Fantasy With Friends discussion post for this week (prompts hosted at Pages Unbound). This week the prompt’s about favourite genres:

Do you have any favorite subgenres of fantasy such as urban fantasy, historical fantasy, etc.?

Sort of! There are subgenres/combinations of genres that will always draw my attention, but I don’t have exclusive favourites, and it’d probably take some working out from the books on my shelves, because I like to try a bit of everything. I think there are some people who find a subgenre they love and just revel in it for months/years/forever, reading little else, and that’s not me — I’m too restless for that and too prone to trying anything and everything I can.

(Which, to be clear, is not intended as a diss for folks who find a genre or a corner of a genre and get themselves entrenched! It’s just not for me.)

As for what draws my attention, I had to actually have a think about it, because it’s definitely been evolving. I think these are the top ones though:

Fantasy mysteries: I do get a little picky about this genre, because a fantasy mystery has to be careful if it wants to be a fair-play mystery (one where the reader has all the clues). People need to get enough background to the story to be able to theorise for themselves. Even when it’s not intended as a fair-play mystery, the reader shouldn’t be totally blindsided by stuff like special murder magic or something at the end of the story. Still, there are some very fun fantasy mysteries out there: Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption manage to give you enough detail to the world and magic that you can theorise for yourself, though they aren’t 100% fair-play. Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead is pretty good at that as well. I recently snagged Oliver K. Langmead’s upcoming The Killing of a Chestnut Tree as an ARC exactly because it’s a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes in a fantasy world (and indeed loved it!).
Cosy fantasy: If anything, I’m even pickier here because sometimes “cosy fantasy” ends up all vibes and no substance, and even interpersonal interactions can get flattened down to keep things low conflict to the point that characters and relationships can end feeling cardboard. Sometimes the happy endings feel too easy to be real, as well. There are cosy/lower-stakes fantasy I’ve loved, though — Legends & Lattes, for example, and The Teller of Small Fortunes.
Retellings/reinterpretations: There are some ridiculously clever ones that are completely transformative, like T. Kingfisher’s Hemlock & Silver, which is very much a Snow White retelling, but is also full of inventiveness. The mirror monsters are an astounding idea. Shout out too to Jacqueline Carey’s spin on The Lord of the Rings, Banewreaker and Godslayer; it’s been so long since I read those I don’t think I have reviews to link, but which I loved — you wouldn’t think anyone could make Sauron the good guy, and that’s not exactly what Carey does, but you can see the influence. There’s also Jo Walton’s The King’s Peace and sequel, and The Prize in the Game… I’ve been meaning to reread these for quite a while, because they are reflections on Arthurian legends (and The Tain) while being wholly their own thing too. It’s really exciting when people do retellings of less-known stories, too: I’m currently reading Finn Longman’s The Wolf and His King, which retells Marie de France’s ‘Bisclavret’, and I love that.
Political fantasy: I read Kushiel’s Dart at an impressionable age, and I’ve often looked for similarly rich political intrigue ever since. The Goblin Emperor and The Hands of the Emperor are recent books that scratched the same itch, and I’ve just remembered E.J. Beaton’s The Councillor as well (and sadly learned that the sequel may never be published). In a slightly different way, The Traitor Baru Cormorant digs into this too, though I didn’t get into the follow-up books.
Historical fantasy: Books like Guy Gavriel Kay’s A Song for Arbonne and Sailing to Sarantium really left their fingerprints on me (and arguably Kushiel’s Dart falls under this heading as well, while many of Kay’s books have political scheming too, like Tigana). I do think this genre can tend to be a bit bland and conjure up a very single-note “history” (i.e. medieval European), so it’s also especially nice when someone goes beyond that (I’d gladly take recommendations on this front!).
Xianxia and wuxia. I’m combining these because it’s a fairly recent interest of mine (though I’ve read a couple of wuxia-inspired novels here and there before), and mostly in the context of danmei and baihe (which I didn’t want to call a subgenre of fantasy because they don’t have to be fantasy). I have fallen totally in love with stories like The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish (though this isn’t quite xianxia, it’s adjacent) and The Beauty’s Blade, and I’m looking forward to reading more wuxia- and xianxia-inspired novels (like S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws).

Okay, I’m going to stop there, but it was fun to think about what exactly draws me in!

Tags: books, discussions, Fantasy With Friends

Review – Snake-eater

Posted April 19, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Snake-eater

by T. Kingfisher

Genres: Fantasy, Horror
Pages: 352
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
In an isolated desert town, a young woman seeking a fresh start is confronted by ancient gods, malevolent supernatural forces, and eccentric neighbours. A witty horror-tinged fantasy, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Chuck Tingle, and Rachel Harrison.

When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper.

On arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt’s lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert. The people are odd, but friendly, and eager to help Selena settle into her new home.

But Quartz Creek’s inhabitants share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbours. Selena finds herself pursued by disturbing apparitions, visitations that come in the night and seem to want something from her.

Aunt Amelia owed a debt. Now her god has come to collect.

I saw someone describing T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater as “cosy horror”, and that does make sense to me, weird as it sounds. There’s something very tempting in the life that Selena manages to find for herself, the friends she makes, and the sense of being home that Kingfisher somehow manages to communicate with every word of description (making her acknowledgements section note about returning to high desert areas pretty unsurprising, though I hadn’t known that she was returning to somewhat familiar ground when she moved).

I love the community described as well — Grandma Billy especially, and Father Aguirre, but really all of them. They’re so kind and welcoming, usually without forcing Selena into anything (even if Grandma Billy’s a bit of a forceful personality, she still gives Selena her space).

One thing that might give people pause in reading this is that Selena’s recovering from an abusive relationship, in which her partner (Walter) tried to control her, often doing so by telling her she’s terrible with people, can’t tell when people are uncomfortable or dislike her, etc, or by acting like she’s mentally ill for having emotions and breaking down under the strain of him treating her that way. A couple of reviewers said that she’s “obviously” suffering from autistic burnout, which I can’t speak to; mostly it looked like someone coming out of a terrible relationship that made them doubt themselves, to me.

And then, of course, there’s Snake-eater. That’s a lot cleaner peril than Walter, really: Selena’s aunt was in a relationship with a roadrunner god, who drained her energy and killed her. Now he wants Selena, and when she declines, he’s furious.

I worried that the two relationships would get knitted together the whole way, with some kind of confrontation with both Snake-eater and Walter, or Snake-eater using Walter — or even vice versa. It felt like that would have over-simplified things, and thankfully that’s not how it played out. I liked that the situation with Walter is ultimately resolved in a single chapter, using everything that Selena has learned about her community and her own ability to take care of herself.

I think there are some slight pacing issues with this one, in that it feels like a very slow build and then all of a sudden everything’s come to a head and it’s over… and I hadn’t quite got enough of a sense of building menace from the slow build (if anything, Selena’s growing comfort kind of gives us the opposite, even if she angers Snake-eater and has to deal with that situation). So that’s worth knowing — but even so it’s a book I flew through.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, horror, SF/F, T. Kingfisher

Review – The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy

Posted April 19, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy

by Brigitte Knightley

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Series: Dearly Beloathed #1
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
A slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy featuring a scholarly healer and a gentleman assassin, set in an exquisite fantasy world, perfect for fans of The Love Hypothesis and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, is in dire need of healing. Naturally – such is the grim comedy of fate – the only healer who can help is Aurienne Fairhrim, preeminent scientist, bastion of moral good, and member of an enemy Order. Aurienne is desperate for funding to heal the sick - so desperate that, when Osric bribes her to help him, she accepts, even if she detests him and everything he stands for.

A forced collaboration ensues: the brilliant Woman in STEM is coerced into working with the PhD in Murders, much to Aurienne's disgust. As Osric and Aurienne work together to heal his illness and investigate the mysterious reoccurrence of a deadly pox, they find themselves ardently denying their attraction, which only fuels the heat between them.

The main problem for me with Brigitte Knightley’s The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy was that the characters were both insufferable. This would make absolute sense if it were only when we’re in one POV talking about the other, but one of Aurienne’s early chapters just made her sound like she was completely up herself:

It was hard, being perfect in an imperfect world, but Aurienne managed. If she had a flaw, it was that she was the Best, and she knew she was the Best. Some called it arrogance. She called it competence untainted by performative humility. But if she was the Best — as brilliant as she was beautiful, a researcher unparalleled, a daughter beloved, a lover sometimes (did anyone truly deserve her? Frankly, no) — why, pray, had she just been asked to care for the Worst? Tasked to heal [an assassin], of all the foul things in the world?

Frankly, she can go off and fuck herself, since she thinks she’s the only one who’s worthy.

Mostly in a romance, you expect some ability to actually like the characters. And also some chemistry between the two would be nice. Unfortunately, they’re both awful, and the chemistry between them isn’t great. That they dislike each other, I can believe; that that turns to attraction/love, I can’t, particularly as those sections go all purple prose (in comparison to the quippy banter of the rest of the thing).

You’d think I had absolutely no fun at all with that lead-in, but the weird thing is that I did have fun with it. I don’t know if I’ll read the next book, but I finished this one pretty quickly! It was fun in a trashy way (which I say because most people know what I mean by “trashy” and not actually as a value judgement on “trashy” books which can be deeply enjoyable), and I can kinda understand why some people adore it. It feels like a fanfic, for the very good reason that it was.

On which note, I will warn as well that the veneer is very thin at times. Harry Potter lingers on it like a bad smell. Not all of us pickled ourselves in that fandom, but there’s stuff even I realised was mostly find-and-replace (deofols = owls, for instance). If you don’t like accidentally finding yourself perpetuating the worship of a series written by a transphobe who uses her platform to try to hurt as many trans people as she can, children included — well. Now you’re warned!

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Brigitte Knightley, romance, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 18, 2026 by Nicky in General / 29 Comments

Happy weekend! It feels genuinely springlike at last here in the UK — sure, we’ve had our rainy days, but also some lovely sun. Hope everyone’s had a good week!

Books acquired this week

Unsurprisingly, after the spree of my London trip (documented over the last couple Saturdays!), I haven’t been looking to acquire new reading material this week. Still, predictably enough new reading material has found me. First up, two borrows from the National Poetry Library:

I picked up milk and honey because of this week’s Let’s Talk Bookish discussion topic (both my review and my answer to the topic are below in the roundup, if you’re curious!). Ambush at Still Lake was a random choice based on amusement at the pulpy cover; the brief excerpt of poetry I saw suggests I may well not enjoy this volume, but I do like trying random poetry anyway.

I also got a couple of review copies, excitingly — Del Rey sent me a link to get A Trade of Blood on Netgalley, woooo, while I have autoapproval from Tor so simply pounced on The Killing of a Chestnut Tree. I’d seen Tammy talk about it as an upcoming book a few weeks ago, and my interest was piqued, especially given the Holmes pastiche.

Finally… somehow, I’d left a book out of my posts about the London trip! I realised once I was finally getting everything properly shelved. I kinda can’t believe I’d forgotten it, because the title kinda tickles me:

I’m looking forward to digging into that one, too!

Posts from this week

First, as always, let’s round up the reviews I posted this week (though some of them have been written for months):

Fantasy light novel: Solo Leveling, vol 1, by Chugong (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy: The Hedgewitch of Foxhall, by Anna Bright (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Mystery: Murder Offstage, by L.B. Hathaway (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Poetry: milk and honey, by Rupi Kaur (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Non-fiction: Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, by Alice Roberts (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Romance manhwa: Tied to You, vol 4, by WHAT/Chelliace (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

And of course, the other posts:

What I’m reading

I’m still having trouble settling down to read, finding myself more interested in messing around with casual games (currently doing a lot of hidden object games like A Park Full of Cats), but I did finish a few books this week anyway, so here’s a preview of what will (eventually) be coming up for review on the blog!

For this weekend, I have a few books targeted that I want to finish: Daedalus is Dead (Seamus Sullivan), A Palace Near the Wind (Ai Jiang), The Murder at Gulls Nest (Jess Kidd), and — even though I only just got it! — The Killing of a Chestnut Tree (Oliver K. Langmead).

Other than that, we’ll see. Maybe it’ll be mostly hidden object games. If so, that will be fine!

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

Let’s Talk Bookish: Poetry in the Age of Social Media

Posted April 17, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads! Every Friday they have a different topic for participants to write about and discuss, e.g. like this post.

This week’s theme is about Instagram poetry and the like:

A few years ago, poetry saw a surge of popularity on social media thanks to “Instagram Poetry” or “instapoetry” by authors like Rupi Kaur, Amanda Lovelace, and Atticus. Do you think social media platforms have changed how people discover poetry? Do you think “instapoetry” makes poetry seem more approachable, or do you agree with critics who say that it’s not “real poetry”? Have you read any instapoetry, and if so, what are your favourite authors/poems/collections?

So let’s take it bit by bit…

Do you think social platforms have changed how people discover poetry?

Like any change in how people communicate, yes, and also because it proves a different potential poetic form as well as a different platform, just like artificial character limits created a trend for very short fiction among a subset of people.

It hasn’t changed how I discover poetry, since I’m not on Instagram and I’ve been a reader (and writer) of poetry since I was a child, before anything even generally like Instagram was accessible: I read poetry collections and anthologies (often via my libraries by just picking at random), follow recommendations from other readers via reviews and blogs (though there aren’t a ton around that talk about poetry much), and am a member of the National Poetry Library (UK folks interested in poetry should sign up!).

Do you think “instapoetry” makes poetry seem more approachable, or do you agree with critics who say that it’s not “real poetry”?

I’m not super interested in artificial cutoffs here; if someone says they’re writing poetry, they’re writing poetry, whether it’s poetry that I like or not. I suspect “instapoetry” is indeed more accessible for some, in part because it’s out there on a social media platform they use, rather than tucked away in specific poetry collections that they might not have access to or know about. Poetry is often seen as less accessible than prose anyway, and putting it out there in people’s Instagram feeds is often getting it in front of people who wouldn’t otherwise seek out poetry.

A lot of people who want to create artificial barriers and say something isn’t “real poetry” or “a real novel” or a real anything else are threatened by it and frightened of change, contemptuous of what “young people” (or other trendsetting subgroups) like as a reflex to prove their superiority, etc. There are reasons why critics may not like a given poem, instapoetry or not, and those are valid… but dismissing the whole form/format? That’s sour grapes about something becoming popular of which they don’t approve, and I don’t have time for it.

Have you read any instapoetry, and if so, what are your favourite authors/poems/collections?

Not much that I’m aware of, but it’s not that I wouldn’t; I don’t promise to like it, but I’d happily try it. I borrowed Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey from the National Poetry Library this week, and didn’t love it, though I could see the appealing factors.

Any other suggestions I should try?

Tags: books, discussion, Let's Talk Bookish

Review – Tied to You, vol 4

Posted April 16, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Tied to You

by WHAT, Chelliace

Genres: Fantasy, Manga, Romance
Pages: 320
Series: Tied to You #4
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Wooseo's heart has been swayed, and Jigeon is determined to win it over completely, once and for all. But a meeting between Wooseo, Jiseok, and the Connector may throw a wrench in his plans when Jiseok reveals his brother has been deceiving Wooseo. The lies, the manipulations, the mind games--when all is laid bare to Wooseo, will he choose to stay tied to Jigeon?

Volume four of WHAT/Chelliace’s Tied to You brings everything to a head: Jigeon lays all his cards on the table, Jiseok does too, and Wooseo has to choose what he wants and decide whether he wants the Connector to change anything, or whether he loves his fated partner after all.

There could be some really fascinating stories in this world with non-fated partners, even without the existence of the Connector — Jigeon clearly doesn’t trust to fate, after all, so perhaps there are other pairs out there who make do with ring connections that don’t reflect their feelings. But in this one I don’t think there’s much doubt about what Wooseo will choose in the end…

Even though Jigeon confesses to manipulating the situation, it doesn’t suddenly become a healthy romance — even if Wooseo now chooses it open-eyed. Jigeon’s nature isn’t trusting, not even of fate; I think he’d treat Wooseo well, and carefully avoid any chance of things cooling by manipulating the situation, no matter what. It’s not a relationship I’d choose for myself, for darn sure!

But… maybe it’s good for them. Certainly it was satisfying to see the decision made, and for Wooseo to realise that he has feelings for Jigeon in his own right, not as a stand-in for Jiseok. Still, once more, a warning that this isn’t a fluffy romance (and isn’t intended to be).

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Chelliace, manga, romance, SF/F, WHAT

Review – Domination

Posted April 15, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity

by Alice Roberts

Genres: History
Pages: 432
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
This is the story of the fall of an Empire – and the rise of another.

Who spread Christianity, how, and why? In her quest to find the answer, Professor Alice Roberts takes us on a gripping investigative journey. From a secluded valley in south Wales to the shores of Brittany; from the heart of the Roman Empire in a time of political turmoil to the ancient city of Corinth in the footsteps of the apostle Paul; from Alexandria in the fourth century to Constantinople.

As the Roman Empire crumbled in Western Europe, a shadow of power remained, almost perfectly mapping onto its disappearing territories. And then, it continued to spread. Unearthing the archaeological clues and challenging long-established histories, Professor Roberts tells a remarkable story about the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christianity.

Lifting the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight, this story is nothing short of astonishing.

It took me a little while to properly get into Alice Roberts’ Domination, because it wasn’t as directly related to my interests as the other books of hers I’ve read. Late Roman and Christian history isn’t really my thing for the most part, but I wanted to give it a shot because I liked her other books (like Crypt) so much — and ultimately I was glad I gave it a try, because once the stage is set (after a certain amount of digging through hagiographies and looking at place names), there’s some very interesting analysis.

My favourite part was the discussion of the famous “conversion” of Constantine. Did he in fact paint Christian symbols on the shields of his men, or put a Christian symbol on a banner, in order to bring his men victory? I hadn’t really thought about what evidence we had for this, which would’ve tipped me off right away that it sounded a bit weird: the info comes mostly from a biography of him written by a Christian after his death. But even with that, it still sounded like he used some Christian imagery, like the chi-rho, on his coins… right?

Well, no, again it’s more complicated than that. The same symbol was used by pagans before that to mean “archon”: it seems the use of it as “chi-rho” for Christ post-dates Constantine, possibly even invented in order to co-opt Constantine for Christianity.

At the same time, Roberts makes it clear that Constantine did definitely engage with the growing early Church, offer it support, and seems to have legitimately preferred to discourage blood sacrifices. So there is a basis for considering him a supporter of Christianity, if not a Christian himself — but it’s complicated by all the things people have wanted him to be, and the things they want his action to have meant.

For me, that was the most interesting part of the book, along with the conclusion (painstakingly teased out) that the Roman Empire didn’t so much fall as become transmuted into the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the things that pertained to being Roman, Romanitas, simply became Christian, Christianitas, instead. The state was never separate from religion (the emperor was a living god, starting with Augustus), and Christianity displaced paganism quite readily, taking over various aspects of managing towns and cities.

I did find a couple of things annoying: first, no footnotes, only selected bibliography. Blargh to that. And secondly, Roberts keeps chipping in to remind us not to talk about abstract concepts (“the Church” as a whole) as if they have agency, when things are actually being done by individual people. It’s fair enough, but when she keeps doing it and then correcting herself multiple times (rather than merely doing better about it and editing herself if need be, at least some of the time), it gets in the way of the narrative a bit.

I didn’t like this as much as her books focused on archaeology (and specifically on archaeology of human remains), but in the end, it gave me a lot of interesting new stuff to ponder.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: Alice Roberts, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 15, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Here we are, on Wednesday again somehow…

What have you recently finished reading?

Thanks to a certain friend, the last thing I finished was actually a book called Boring Postcards USA by Martin Parr. It’s… pretty much what it says on the tin: a book full of postcards depicting highways, motel rooms, tools, etc — some of them looking very like tourist postcards, but boring. And sometimes a little horrifying, in terms of the interior decorating. It was very entertaining, all in all, in part because I also know that some Postcrossing members would love to receive and collect things like this. I might review it for Postcrossing’s blog!

Earlier yesterday I also finished Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries, which has some excellent choices and images, but feels a bit fragmented due to being written by various different contributors.

What are you currently reading?

I have a lot of books on my currently reading ‘shelf’ (both physical and on StoryGraph), but realistically I’m only focusing on a couple. One of those is Jess Kidd’s Murder at Gulls Nest, which is going… okay. There’s something awkward about the way it’s written sometimes, like maybe someone’s taken out a thesaurus and got things a bit wrong, or used words they don’t quite understand, e.g. Nora refers to someone as “pertaining to be” a given name, implying that it’s a fake name. That’s… not what “pertaining” means.

I actually quite like the present tense for writing short pieces, but I’m also not sure how well it’s working at this length.

The only other book I’ve actually picked up in the last couple days is Leo Bruce’s Jack on the Gallows Tree, this month’s British Library Crime Classics release. I’m enjoying it more than I feared so far, since it features one of Bruce’s other detectives, not Sergeant Beef (a character I don’t enjoy).

What will you read next?

I’m not sure, but I’m hoping something will grab me soon! Realistically, I should probably focus on some of the books I’ve technically started but haven’t made progress with.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday