Top Ten Tuesday: Book Characters I Wish Were Real People

Posted November 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

This week’s prompt from the Top Ten Tuesday list is “Book Characters I Wish Were Real People”. I’ll have to put on my thinking cap for this one, because the answers aren’t coming to me very readily — but I’ll give it a shot.

Maia Drazhar (Edrehasivar VII), from The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison).
Just because he’s a favourite, really! And not too good to be true: he struggles with a lot of negative feelings, with difficult history with others around him, with anger and spite — but he rises above. If only more people with power were like him!
Harriet Vane, from the Lord Peter Wimsey books (Dorothy L. Sayers).
Quite simply, I’d love to read her books!
Greta Helsing, from the Dr. Greta Helsing books (Vivian Shaw).
Okay, we’d have to also have various folklore creatures in order for her to actually have her usual job, but… even if she were just a normal British GP, it seems like she’d be pretty awesome. She has the right motivations to be a doctor, and will help everyone because she feels she has to, no matter what they’ve done. Excellent qualities in a doctor.
Lady Isabella Trent, from the Lady Trent books (Marie Brennan).
A pioneering female scientist to look up to? Yes, please. Also… I wouldn’t mind a few dragons to come along with her, to keep her from getting bored. (Maybe also bring her husband Suhail along too. She’d be a menace if she got really bored, so let’s give her plenty to keep her busy.)
Shen Yuan, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu).
Transmigration and all, please! If the webnovel can be in English and I can be one of the readers who so torment him by pushing the change to the genre, that’d be hilarious, too.
Masaru, from Dinosaur Sanctuary (Itaru Kinoshita).
A real dinosaur I could actually visit in a zoo? Yes please! I’d love to see all of them, like Trom and Benki, too, but Masaru’s a special one.
King Arthur, from the Arthurian legends.
If he could make his prophesied return to fix the world (or at least Britain; if we start there, maybe it’ll make a difference?) now, I’d love that, please.
Chief Inspector Macdonald, from the Macdonald mysteries (E.C.R. Lorac).
And his whole team, to be honest. If cops were all actually like Macdonald, we at least wouldn’t see the abuses of power etc etc that we do. It’s nice to imagine.
Phryne Fisher, from the Miss Fisher mysteries (Kerry Greenwood).
Okay, she and I would have very little in common, but I’m pretty sure she’d be a net positive to the world all the same.
Breq, from the Imperial Radch books (Ann Leckie).
Breq knows a fair bit about dealing with tyranny, after all. She could sure shake things up!

In most of these cases, I don’t think I want to meet these people (I’m shy anyway), I just want them to exist! They’d do some good in the world.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Bad Dolls [Rachel Harrison]

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

Bad Dolls

by Rachel Harrison

Genres: Horror, Short Stories
Pages: 192
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
In Reply Hazy, Try Again, an indecisive young woman finds a mysterious Magic 8 Ball that might just have the answers she's been looking for...or might lead her down a path of self-destruction. In Bachelorette, a bridesmaid attends her childhood best friend's bachelorette weekend only to discover the itinerary may demand more than she's willing to sacrifice. In Goblin, an unusually brutal dieting app wreaks havoc on the life of a timid, insecure woman preparing to attend her ex's wedding. In Bad Dolls, after the death of her younger sister, a wayward young woman comes into possession of a strange porcelain doll that could offer a connection to her lost sister, but could also just be pure evil. These dark tales navigate the complications of modern life with humour, insight and the odd blood sacrifice...

Rachel Harrison’s Bad Dolls is a collection of four short horror stories, which I found sort of predictable, but satisfying because it was (mostly) obvious how things were going to fall into place. Sometimes that’s fun, in the same way that there’s a satisfaction in knowing what the picture’s going to look like from the lid of the puzzle box, and so it was with these stories for me (that and noticing the smaller details here and there that did stand out).

I think my favourite of the four was ‘Bachelorette’, which I hadn’t expected to end quite that way (I’d expected an ending that was worse for the main character, shall we say? I’m trying not to spoiler here!).

The title story is pretty darn creepy, too, in the way that the main character just… gives into it. She has no real plan to make sure this ends, like someone in an abusive relationship who holds on to the “good parts”. It ends on a pretty unsettling note.

Not unmissable or anything, but I had fun.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, horror, Rachel Harrison, short stories

Fantasy with Friends: Graphic Novel Adaptations

Posted November 9, 2026 by Nicky in General / 1 Comment

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 graphic novel adaptations:

An increasing number of books seem to be newly adapted as graphic novels. How do you feel about this trend? Are you excited to see new adaptations? Do you think new audiences could discover the story? Are there some books that you think might be difficult to adapt in this way?

I’m sort of ambivalent on this topic. On the one hand, a lot of the ones I’ve read seem to either simplify the story too much or not really do a great job of adaptation. Sometimes they feel more like they’re just illustrated versions, and that’s disappointing, because the thing about graphic novels is that they’re a whole different form, and you have to tell the story in a different way. I get why they sometimes stick close to the source (like A Wizard of Earthsea‘s adaptation does), but it sometimes means they don’t really work as graphic novels.

On the other hand, I’ve been reading some great manhua and manhwa adaptations of various Chinese and Korean webnovels, like Solo Leveling, Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Heaven Official’s Blessing… and I really appreciate the way the switch to a visual medium helps me understand what characters and settings look like (which I need a lot of help with, given that I’m completely aphantasic). Often I find that reading the graphic adaptations helps the details fall into place, as well.

So I definitely feel there have been bad adaptations, and ones that are not to my taste, and ones which are just cash-ins… but that doesn’t mean I won’t try more, just that I’m maybe a bit cautious about it.

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

Review – After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, vol 3 [Liu Gou Hua]

Posted November 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine

by Liu Gou Hua

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 402
Series: After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine #3
Rating: five-stars

Synopsis:
CAN LOVE CHANGE HISTORY?

Jiang Suizhou, modern-day history professor turned historical cut-sleeve prince, has helped Huo Wujiu regain his former self. The “god of war” can finally walk again, his men are embedded in the city, and soon he may have an army. But a most shocking discovery has rocked Jiang Suizhou: his feelings for Huo Wujiu go much deeper than simple camaraderie—an affection secretly reciprocated. However, when the woman destined to be Huo Wujiu’s partner returns to the capital, Jiang Suizhou grows further conflicted. After all, he’d never get in the way of fate…would he?

Meanwhile, Minister Pang is setting in motion a plan to take down his nephew, the hedonistic emperor of Jing. Once this trap is sprung, will Jiang Suizhou’s and Huo Wujiu’s unspoken feelings for each other be enough to change the course of written history?

Volume three of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine really really had me. The slow burn properly ignites, with the story kicking into high gear and the relationship between Huo Wujiu and Jiang Suizhou finally forming. There are some very dramatic scenes, sometimes with surprising glimpses of empathy for the emperor — a spoiled boy who was led astray by someone who dispensed some of the little affection he ever received.

And of course, a dramatic confession of love…

There are some excellent bits of internal art, and some beautiful moments as the relationship finds its feet. Huo Wujiu wants to just protect Jiang Suizhou and keep him safe from the world, but Jiang Suizhou wants to help him, and to truly change the course of history to protect him from harm. At the same time, Jiang Suizhou thinks it’s only right that he fade into the background, and not allow his status as the Prince of Jing to risk reflecting badly on Huo Wujiu’s leadership.

That leads to possibly my favourite scene, where Huo Wujiu outright calls himself Jiang Suizhou’s wife (since he technically is!), and says that everything he has is his husband’s, in front of one of his men…! Arrghh, it’s just so good.

This is rapidly becoming one of my favourite danmei; it’s one of the better written that I’ve read, and the slow burn made me really believe in them — especially since they both went into it open-eyed, at least after a certain point. I love it so much I’m tempted to do an immediate reread, but I’ll probably wait until the last book is out!

Rating: 5/5 (“loved it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, danmei, historical fiction, light novels, Liu Gou Hua, romance, SF/F

My Year in Non-Fiction

Posted November 8, 2026 by Nicky in General / 19 Comments

This week’s theme for Nonfiction November is “My Year in Non-fiction”, so I dug into my StoryGraph stats a bit as a starting point, finding I’ve read 83 books that StoryGraph classes as non-fiction — so far! That does seem to include some of the poetry anthologies that I’ve read, but even so, I think it’s likely to be too many books to feature them all… so let’s talk mostly about the good ‘uns.

You might also be interested in my post from last year, which took a theme-based approach.

Five-star non-fiction I read in 2026:

This is what it says on the tin: the handful of books I gave my highest and rarest rating.

As you see, it’s a pretty select bunch! Here are links to the reviews:

A History of England in 25 Poems (Catherine Clarke)
Ramesses the Great: Egypt’s King of Kings (Toby Wilkinson)
The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History (Selena Wisnom)

I’m surprised no science books made it into this tier, but thinking back on this year, I haven’t read a whole lot of popular science.

Four-star non-fiction I read in 2026:

These are still pretty great books which just missed being perfect for me, with my four-star rating meaning “I really liked it”. (Note: I’m not saying five-star books are perfect in general, it’s not an objective assessment! I rate based on enjoyment.) They’re still pretty great.

As you see, it’s a fairly random mix! Here are the reviews:

The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs: The 230-Million-Year Story of Their Time On Earth (Riley Black)
The Meteorite Hunters: On the Trail of Extra-Terrestrial Treasures and the Secrets Inside Them (Joshua Howgego)
Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works (Helen Pearson)
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It (Cory Doctorow)
Dressing the Queen: Two Hundred Years of Makers and Monarchy (Kate Strasdin)
Japanese Dress in Detail (Josephine Rout)
Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature (various authors)
Craft Land: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades (James Fox)
Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Mary Beard)
Lost Voices of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt (Charlotte Booth)
Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity (Alice Roberts)
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Eleanor Barraclough)
Welsh Food Stories (Carwyn Graves)
How to Kill A Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words (Sophia Smith Galer)
Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts (Garry J. Shaw)
How Queer Bookshops Changed the World (A.J. West)
Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers (Anthony Delaney)

My review of The Welsh Language: A History (Janet Davies) isn’t up yet, but in brief, I found it a good primer to the history and culture of the Welsh language.

Notable three-star non-fiction I read in 2026:

In my writing system, a three-star read is still a “liked it”. I won’t go over all of my three-star reads, but there are some I found interesting to read and talk about, and one person’s ‘meh’ is another person’s perfect book, so you never know… you might find something perfect for you here! For these, I’ve added a brief note about why I had reservations, so you can decide if you want to check out the full review.

A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering (Elinor Cleghorn) — I found this an emotionally tough but interesting read.
20th-Century Fashion in Detail (Claire Wilcox et al) — this series is pretty amazing, and this volume is gorgeous as ever; I just have quibbles on presentation.
The Queer Thing about Sin: Why the West Came to Hate Queer Love (Harry Tanner) — this has interesting ideas flawed by unconscious assumptions and poor understanding of non-Christian religions.
Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire (Emma Southon) — lingered enough on certain aspects that it began to feel prurient, but a good history.
A History of the World in 50 Pieces (Tom Service) — interesting idea, longed for a playlist; also, it’s not really a history of the world, more a history of significant pieces.
City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Papyri Beneath the Egyptian Sand Reveal a Long-Lost World (Peter Parsons) — would’ve loved more focus on the actual papyri as objects and how they give up their information, rather than only the information they contained.
Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians (Deloupy & Salomé Parent-Rachdi) — very wordy for a graphic novel, art not to my taste, but a fascinating perspective.
Cat Tales: A History: How We Learned to Live with Cats and They Learned to Live With Us (Jerry D. Moore) — didn’t discuss house cats as much as I’d hoped given the title.

Bottom line:

I’m surprised all over again by the relative lack of popular science or science history books through each category here for this year (though there are some three-star or lower books I didn’t feature, the pattern held). I guess that maybe having completed my most recent degree (an MSc in Infectious Diseases) and graduated this year, I was escaping a little bit — it was a worthwhile endeavour, and infectious diseases remain fascinating, but maybe I needed a break, ha.

Also, thinking about it, I think a lot of the popular science I encountered in the wild was based around nutrition and rarely seemed to address the immune implications of diet (which I’ve studied), so it wasn’t interesting to me. May that trend pass and more interesting pop-science come my way, please! Santa, I have some requests…

As ever, you can see my usual fairly random interest, with a focus on “a history of X in Y objects” type books, Egyptology, fashion history, Greek and Roman history, and Welsh history. A bit of a theme of queer non-fiction ran through this year, too; that’s not one of my particular interests per se, but it’s obviously relevant and interesting when it does cross my path.

Now I’ve finally done mine, I’m looking forward to reading about everyone else’s year in non-fiction!

Tags: books, discussion, non-fiction, Non-fiction November

Review – A Wizard of Earthsea (graphic novel) [Fred Fordham]

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

A Wizard of Earthsea

by Fred Fordham, Ursula Le Guin

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 270
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Ursula K. Le Guin's timeless and revered A Wizard of Earthsea is reimagined in a richly expansive graphic novel by acclaimed artist Fred Fordham, creator of stunning adaptations To Kill a Mockingbird and Brave New World.

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and unleashed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

Experience the bestselling first adventure of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle as a masterly crafted graphic novel. Fred Fordham brings new life to Le Guin's iconic fantasy classic with his breathtaking illustrations and thoughtful text adaptation.

Fred Fordham’s graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea is something that I can well believe it a deeply considered labour of love, sticking close to Ursula Le Guin’s exact words and changing very little in the adaptation, and approved by her son. It’s a very wordy graphic novel, actually, taking a lot of Le Guin’s narration verbatim, and moving other bits into dialogue to keep as much as possible.

I think something that took a lot of liberties would have been very different, but maybe… a bit more enjoyable to me? It’s not that it was a bad read, but I’m not sure that it added a lot to the world of Earthsea, and I think anyone who is put off by the language of the original is going to be put off here, even though there are also pictures.

I also have mixed feelings about the art. I know others find it beautiful, but I find it rather murky, with many panels barely lit at all, and people/objects hard to discern. This is almost certainly exacerbated by me not being a very visual person at all and having no visual imagination, but it still made it hard for me to really enjoy this adaptation, despite some of the scenes being very beautiful and adding a lot of life.

Overall, not really what I’d hoped for, but hopefully it’s bringing Earthsea to audiences who might not have read it!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Fred Fordham, graphic novels, SF/F, Ursula Le Guin

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 30 Comments

Haaaaappy weekend! It’s been a busy week, though it always seems to be a busy week around here!

Books acquired this week

Wooo, another pre-order came in! I thought Mistakenly Saving the Villain was supposed to be released in October, but I guess either it got changed or the date I saw before was an error. I’ve been eagerly waiting for it, either way! I’d actually preordered it back in August, knowing I’d want it ASAP on release.

I did also snag a handful of novellas that looked tempting in honour of Novellas in November. I deliberately went for a bit of a spread of genres, since it seems like a good opportunity to dip my toe into different authors and try things.

Excited to read all of these! I’ve already made a start.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a round-up of the reviews first! Don’t forget that these are from the last few months, and don’t represent what I read this week. I have sooo many reviews backlogged and ready to post, but I try not to flood the blog — and to post some variety. My descriptions of my ratings are literal, too: if I rated something 3/5 stars, I promise I really did like it!

Poetry: Off the Shelf, ed. Carol Ann Duffy (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Fantasy manhwa: Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, vol 4, by Umi and Sleepy-C (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Sci-fi horror: There Is No Antimimetics Division, by qntm (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy: The Green Man’s Heir, by Juliet E. McKenna (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Mystery: Let Him Lie, by Ianthe Jerrold (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Embers of the Hands, by Emma Barraclough (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Poetry: A460: Poems for the Road, by Ness Owen and Sian Northey (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

Of course, there have been a bunch of non-review posts:

Man, it’s good to be able to schedule posts again! This was my most organised week in a while, even given I’ve been drafting and formatting posts in advance again for a few months.

What I’m reading

As usual, let’s start with a sneak peek at what I’ve been reading! Last Saturday the Haunted Shelf readathon ended, so I got enthusiastic… as ever, don’t take any book’s inclusion here as a recommendation, though! It’s just a log of what I’ve read — reviews come later.

Here are the books I’ll be reviewing some time soon:

My plan for the weekend involves reading a lot of novellas, unsurprisingly! But I also hope to sort through some books and start some more of my longer reads as well, focusing on sci-fi and non-fiction (in aid of the other reading challenges I’ve joined in with this month)… though I’m also likely to tackle Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 4, and/or start my reread of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine.

Once the fourth volume of the latter hits, that’ll be my first priority this week! I hope it’ll get dispatched on Tuesday and arrive on Wednesday. 🤞

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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

Book Blogger Hop: Owning a Bookshop

Posted November 6, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 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 a what-if:

Imagine you owned a bookstore—what would it feel like?

Oof, probably quite stressful! Managing stock, dealing with customers, handling rent and taxes and paying any employees… yeah, I can’t help it, my brain jumped straight to the practicalities! Running any kind of business is way more stressful than cosy fiction likes to make it seem. Much as I love my cosy stories, that’s the first thing that came to mind!

But… if I did… I imagine that there’d be some amazing moments, too. Getting to know regulars and being able to hand them the right book in the right moment. Knowing my shop would be a nice escape for people from the busy high street or whatever’s going on in their heads. Handling all those lovely, lovely books… and getting to curate the selection to have a little something for everyone. That would be a lot of fun.

If I owned a bookshop, I’d definitely make sure to make it the kind of haven that a reader like me would enjoy, with a little of everything, so that’d be really satisfying, too.

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

Review – A470: Poems for the Road [ed. Ness Owen & Sian Northey]

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

A470: Poems for the Road / Cerddi'r Ffordd

by Sian Northey (editor), Ness Owen (editor)

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 114
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Fifty poems by Welsh poets celebrating the A470. Originaly written in Welsh or English, every poem has been translated into the other language and set out side by side as we travel the length of the country.

Coming in from outside Wales, the A470 isn’t such a feature, and since that was pretty much always my lot, somehow Ness Owen and Sian Northey’s earlier anthology, A470, didn’t speak to me as much as Afonydd did (even though I knew few of the named rivers in Afonydd, I had the Taff and the nameless — so far as I know — streams coming down from Caerphilly Mountain in mind).

Still, it’s a deeply, profoundly Welsh project, celebrating poets writing in both English and Cymraeg, translating each to the other so both halves can read the work. There’s a good selection of poets here, and I’d be curious to read more of some of them.

I think it’s maybe slightly less well presented than Afonydd, but overall… yeah. Another lovely collection.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, Ness Owen (editor), poetry, Sian Northey (editor)

November Reading Plans

Posted November 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

I’m not sure if this will be a regular monthly feature, but this month happens to have a bunch of fun things going on, and I’d have liked to share more about the Haunted Shelf Shenanigans last month… so let’s have a chat about my reading plans for the month!

First up, there’s a readathon on Dreamwidth’s readingtogether community designed to focus on unread and half-read books in November. I have a plethora of those, so here are my targets:

Finish five books from my “paused” pile on StoryGraph
Finish five books from my backlog (that aren’t already in my paused pile), i.e. books bought before 2026 began
Finish five books bought in 2026 (that aren’t already in my currently reading/paused pile)

I figure that’s very doable (at least at my current reading pace), without constraining me too much on what to read. It should be able to feed into most of my other reading challenges this month!

Speaking of which…

Learn more here!

If you’ve hung around here much, you’ll know that I’m a fairly big non-fiction reader, and I hope to join in with the posts about this and do some non-fiction reading this month — especially since I didn’t fit in a lot of it last month. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll read, but here are some possibilities:

With My Own Hand (Ashley Douglas)
The Castle: A History (John Goodall)
A Lab of One’s Own (Patricia Fara)
The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading (Sam Leith)
X Marks the Spot: The Story of Archaeology in Eight Extraordinary Discoveries (Michael Scott)

But I’ll lean into my whim here, as ever. There are lots of books in my non-fiction bookcase that I haven’t read yet!