Author: Nicky

Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

The Apothecary Diaries

by Natsu Hyuuga, Touko Shino

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels
Pages: 297
Series: The Apothecary Diaries (LN) #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A palace servant trained in herbal medicine finds herself in the heart of imperial intrigue in this enthralling period mystery!

Dismissed from the rear palace, Maomao returns to service in the outer court--as the personal serving woman to none other than Jinshi! That doesn't necessarily make her popular with the other ladies, but a bit of jealousy might be the least of her problems. A mysterious warehouse fire, an official with a very bad case of food poisoning, and the mysterious last will and testament of a deceased craftsman all demand her attention--but are these cases really separate, or do they share a troubling connection? Then there's the mysterious military man who continually visits Jinshi. He's strange, maybe even a little twisted...and he seems very interested in Maomao.

I probably shouldn’t have left it this long to review volume two of Natsu Hyuuga’s The Apothecary Diaries, but it’s one I really enjoyed, so I don’t want to be quiet about it even if my impressions aren’t so fresh! Maomao remains a really fun character: deeply practical in a way that comes across as a bit deranged. (Actually, that’s a thing I really like in characters in general — think Emily Wilde and Isabella Trent, too! Hmmmmm.) I love that Jinshi is fascinated by her and she just totally stonewalls his interest; I really wonder if this is meant to be a will-they-or-won’t-they or whether she’ll always say no to him. I feel like I want the latter, in some ways, but I’m already starting to feel sorry for Jinshi!

I do wish that we saw a bit more of Jinshi’s cleverness too, because at times it feels like Maomao’s the only competent one in the whole court, at least as far as solving these mysteries go. Sometimes that’s because she’s the only one with the knowledge of poisons, but still…

This volume does also dig a little bit into Maomao’s origins, and ouch. I wonder whether more will happen with that, or if this kind of wrapped it up? There are so many volumes to come, and I’m not sure yet what the ongoing threads might be, other than Jinshi’s fascination with Maomao.

I find these light novels really compulsive reading, super quick reads with total absorption, which is a nice feeling. And I kind of want to read the manga at about the same pace, so I have a few volumes of that to catch up with!

Looking forward to reading the next volume of the light novel soon, in any case.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

by Misaki, Momochi, Sando

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 200
Series: A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation #4
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When Lizel mysteriously finds himself in a city that bears odd similarities to his own but clearly isn't, he quickly comes to terms with the unlikely truth: this is an entirely different world. Even so, laid-back Lizel isn't the type to panic. He immediately sets out to learn more about this strange place, and to help him do so, hires a seasoned adventurer named Gil as his tour guide and protector.

Until he's able to find a way home, Lizel figures this is a perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life adventuring as part of a guild. After all, he's sure he'll go home eventually... might as well enjoy the otherworldly vacation for now!

In the fourth volume of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, the bandit plot continues, and the red-haired adventurer who has been interested in joining them before gets a bit more serious, introducing himself as Eleven. His antics give us a more serious side of Lizel — seriously, don’t get on his bad side — which is intriguing. It’s my understanding that the light novel makes it clear that Lizel’s actively manipulating people around him, which is implied several times in the manga, but perhaps less explicit: this time makes it pretty clear.

The Gil/Lizel vibes take slightly more of a back seat to Lizel/Eleven vibes, but there’s still a sense that Gil is the only one Lizel considers an equal, the only one he allows to see all sides of him.

It’s more and more obvious that there are barely any women in the series, which is a bit eyebrow-raising, but I still love the art and the dynamic between Gil and Lizel.

Rating: 4/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted April 2, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Yay! Time to talk about books. Yep, it’s Wednesday.

Cover of A Mudlarking Year by Lara MaiklemWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last couple of things I’ve read were really short; the second volume of Dan Abnett’s Immortal Red Sonja, which I didn’t like, and Alix E. Harrow’s “The Knight and the Butcherbird”, which I did enjoy and is going to linger with me a bit. I’ve been needing short books a bit, since things are busy, and those both filled a hole.

Before that, I finished up reading Lara Maiklem’s A Mudlarking Year, which was very like the first book by her I read (Mudlarking). I liked it less than I liked Mudlarking, oddly enough for the same reasons as I liked that one, perhaps partly because I’d read more criticism of her possessive attitude over “her patch” and so on.

Cover of Queer City by Peter AckroydWhat are you currently reading?

I’m close to finishing up with Scarhaven Keep (J.S. Fletcher), which is a classic mystery that’s going exactly where I expected it to. There’s just one thing I’m wondering about, and I’m not sure I see where that’s going. Or rather, I hope that my vague thought is wrong, because that would be an annoying turn and I don’t think it’d make a lot of sense.

I’m also reading Peter Ackroyd’s Queer City, and I’m… not enchanted? It just feels like a series of lists, somehow: it’s a lot of information, and that without numbered references, so it’s hard to follow up even though there’s quite a lot of sources listed at the end. And it just doesn’t feel very… lively? I don’t know. Non-fiction can be very engaging, but this one’s not grabbing me.

Cover of Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony BoucherWhat will you read next?

I’m not sure, as usual. I half-started Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ The Cleopatras, a couple of weeks ago, but barely passed the prologue. It’s on my Book Spin Bingo card for this month again, so I might dig further into that and get properly started. The Book Spin and Double Spin choices are Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption and Anthony Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue, so those are options too.

Or something totally random. Who knows!

How about you?

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Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Posted April 2, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

by Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 267
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

From seals' frisky behaviour to red squirrels making their last stand in the battle against the greys, here are the mammals of Britain as you’ve never seen them before.

Join Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall on an overnight stakeout in search of the elusive pine marten. Follow them down mines inhabited by greater horseshoe bats, cavers, ravers and teenagers smoking unusual substances. Meet water voles thriving in the East End of Glasgow – despite the lack of water – and observe the brilliance of wild boar in your back garden.

Lively and light-hearted, Black Ops and Beaver Bombing puts animals at the heart of the story, revelling in their peculiarities, with a few corny jokes along the way. In search of answers to the problems that beset our wildlife, Fiona and Tim reveal the wonder of creatures that are worth fighting for.

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing is by a husband-and-wife pair, Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, and it introduces and discusses various of Britain’s wild mammals, scientific engagement with them, and attempts to experience them in the wild. It discusses stuff like rewilding (hence beaver bombing), and the success or not thereof, and also of culling (such as red squirrel culling), and definitely provides some interesting insights.

I think partly the personal touch didn’t work for me a lot; I didn’t care if they managed to see beavers or not, I was here for the science. That’s a failing of a lot of pop-science books, admittedly, and not unique to this. But somehow the chapters really did drag.

All the same, there was a lot of interesting information — I found myself telling my dad various things about voles, since he has an affection for them — and updates on stuff I sort of knew from bits of the news, but had never looked into in detail. The title is probably the snappiest thing about it, though, and much of the content is fairly sobering: we really do fail our wild mammals, here in Britain.

Rating: 3/5

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Top Ten Tuesday: You’d Be A Fool To Skip…

Posted April 1, 2025 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Books You’d Be a Fool Not To Read”. My twist on this is that I’m going to talk about books I didn’t expect to love, and even some books that I didn’t love at first but came to love on rereading them. So it’s books/series/authors that I’d have been a fool not to read (and reread) — though you could take that as a recommendation on my part!

Cover of Feed by Mira Grant Cover of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Cover of Chalice by Robin McKinley Cover of Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal Cover of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

  1. Feed, by Mira Grant. I think back when I first read this, half the problem was that I was in a very anxious period in my life. I’m not sure if I was on anxiety medication yet; possibly not, or possibly not the more effective medication I later tried. Anyway, Feed scared the crap out of me by hitting me right where my fears were. I still have anxiety, and health-related anxiety at that, but I’ve come a long way by being curious about it and looking my fears right in the face — and I’m really fascinated by Feed now, too.
  2. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. It’s not that I hated this when I first read it, as far as I can remember. But I didn’t quite “get” it either. It was a book everyone had been talking about, and it didn’t seem like my thing. I don’t know quite when that changed, but I think it was while reading the later books — and now when I reread this first one, I love it too.
  3. Chalice, by Robin McKinley. The first time I read it, I felt like everything wrapped up too quickly and left me with so many questions. The protagonist spends the whole book not sure what she’s doing, and making it up as she goes along; understanding the boundaries of her abilities by finding them. Reading the book again (and again and again), though, the itch of curiosity is more about figuring more out myself and enjoying the questions.
  4. Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. As with most of the books on this list, it’s not that I hated the book on first read, but it wasn’t an obvious hit either. I think I gave it two stars. It was before I got into romance novels in general, and I really wasn’t an Austen fan. I just didn’t really… get the appeal, and I don’t think I wanted to get the appeal. It stuck in my head, though, and I later read Glamour in Glass and… loved it. At that point I revisited and found that I liked it, actually.
  5. A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. I know! If you’ve been around here long, you know I loved that book. But I didn’t love it the first time — I think I did give it three stars, “liked it”, but I definitely wasn’t all-in, ride-or-die. I can’t say quite why it didn’t work for me at the time — maybe just mood? But I read Tropic of Serpents, adored it, and reconsidered.
  6. The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart. To be accurate, my change of heart on this was more of a general re-evaluation of Mary Stewart’s work and why I was reading it, what I was interested in, etc. I read The Gabriel Hounds without knowing much about Stewart’s work (and quite possibly after having already disliked her Arthurian retellings), and I don’t think I really let myself get into it. I really should revisit again, because aspects of it have reaaaally stuck with me — though Madam, Will You Talk? remains my favourite.
  7. The Talisman Ring, by Georgette Heyer. I can’t remember if this was my first Heyer novel, but I think so (except for maybe her mysteries). It’s a heck of a romp, and it immediately sold me on Heyer’s work.
  8. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This one is an absolute brick of a novel, and I remember vividly acquiring it second-hand during my first degree, and tucking myself away in the library to read great big chunks of it between lectures. I actually read it really fast, after entering into the process somewhat dubiously. There are things about it that I hadn’t expected to like — the footnotes, the faux-Regency style, etc — and I’m pretty sure a couple of people I knew had hated it. And yet!
  9. An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. I hadn’t read much romance at this point, and I’m not entirely sure why I requested it on Netgalley — but given how much I love Charles’ work now, I’m very glad I did. I read it for the first time during a visit to my parents-in-law in Canada, so I also have a vivid memory of keeping a careful straight face while reading the sex scenes in the living room, ahaha.
  10. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. I think (and time proved) that this was not the best starting point for me with Peter Wimsey. He’s not very emotionally present in the story (at least until the end), so if you’ve read a few classic mysteries, you can come into it a bit jaded and not ready to see the detective as a full-blown character. Clouds of Witness or, later, Strong Poison are probably better for that — though really, I think what does it is the cumulative exposure to Lord Peter across the books. I think they’ve all got better (for me) over time as I’ve learned to see where something is Peter being Peter, rather than a generic detective. The audiobook adaptations with Ian Carmichael also add a lot, as well as both adaptations to TV series (older ones with Ian Carmichael, some slightly more recent ones with Edward Petherbridge).

Cover of The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart Cover of The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer Cover of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Cover of An Unsuitable Heir by K.J. Charles Cover of Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

And that’s it! Ten books I wasn’t sure whether I’d like, or which I liked more on reading again. Take these as recommendations if you wish!

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Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Posted March 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History

by Judith Levin

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Edible
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

More than eighty years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking arguments remarkably similar to those they prompt today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally, or nutritionally good or bad? Seemingly since their invention, they have been loved—and hated—for being cold or sweet or fizzy or stimulating. Many of their flavors are international: lemon and ginger were more popular than cola until about 1920. Some are local: tarragon in Russia, cucumber in New York, red bean in Japan, and chinotto (exceedingly bitter orange) in Italy. This book looks not only at how something made from water, sugar, and soda became big business, but also how it became deeply important to people—for fizzy drinks’ symbolic meanings are far more complex than the water, gas, and sugar from which they are made.

Judith Levin’s Soda and Fizzy Drinks is another entry in the “Edible” series, all global histories of particular food items. Levin discusses the development of fizzy drinks and also their modern popularity, what they mean to people, and why they keep coming out with weird seasonal flavours (basically, to grab people’s attention and keep up demand, which isn’t a surprise).

I was surprised to learn about flavours of soda like celery, turkey and gravy, etc, and not surprised by much else such as the history of Coca-Cola and various reactions to Coca-Cola like Inca Cola. I was surprised that (according to Levin) Coca-Cola is viewed as pretty much holy by the Maya people. (Mostly so far in my external reading inspired by this book I’ve found sources discussing it as a part of diet in Mexico, and discussing changes brought by “coca-colonisation”, but less about it actually being a part of religious ceremonies.)

As usual with this series, the book is illustrated (sometimes making reference to the images and sometimes not really), and has a bunch of recipes in the back.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Seams Like Murder

Posted March 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Seams Like Murder

Seams Like Murder

by Tilly Wallace

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 234
Series: Grace Designs Mysteries #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

There are two things that can’t talk—moving pictures and dead showgirls…

1920, Wellington, New Zealand. Grace Devine is poised to build her thriving dress design business as the twenties begin to soar. But when a fashionable client is murdered, suspicion falls on Grace as the last person to see Agatha alive.

As wary clients cancel and business begins to fail, Grace decides there’s only one way to prove her innocence and save her career…this seamstress will turn sleuth to find who really murdered the showgirl.

The more she learns, the more she uncovers of the darker side of the dead woman’s personality. Agatha liked to collect secrets and use them against people. But what target snapped that fatal night? Can Grace stitch together the clues before her life is torn apart…

These heart-warming historical mysteries will send you on a unique New Zealand adventure.

Tilly Wallace’s Seams Like Murder is a short, quick read, set in New Zealand post-WWI. Grace is trying to set up her own fashion house, starting small, and hampered by being a single mother with a “husband” who died in the war (and, the subtext suggests, because she wasn’t actually married to him at all, though I don’t think that’s confirmed in so many words in this book). She has a strong support network, though, with a mentor, a close friend who lives nearby, her father, a cousin, and her husband’s brother — and this was an aspect of the story I rather enjoyed, since they each supported her in their own way.

The mystery itself is relatively obvious, and works out in a relatively obvious way. There’s a hint that there’s potentially to be a romance with the “dishy” detective, which leaves me pretty cold: there’s some genuine chemistry between Grace and her husband’s brother, in a complicated way, and that’s what we actually see any build-up for at all. There are other books in the series, so I guess any further development with the detective happens there, but I’m not super inclined at this moment to follow.

I should note as well that there’s a fantasy element to the story, totally not discussed in the cover copy: Grace has the ability to touch someone and pick up memories that they’re thinking about at the time. The constraints of the gift are fairly undefined in this book, and I find it a bit odd that this element is played down so much in the copy. Seems like a good way to annoy one audience (the historical mystery fans) and miss another completely (the fantasy mystery fans).

In any case, as I mentioned, I’m not really inclined to read more of this series. This book was entertaining enough that I didn’t think about stopping it, and I did enjoy Grace’s family and support network, which felt genuine and warm. There’s nothing that makes me feel it’s going to go in a direction I’m particularly interested in, but I might read a second book if I run across it in a subscription service I use like Kobo Plus or something (I see the first book is available in Kobo Plus in the US at least, after all), and I want something light. It’s not that I disliked it or anything, it just didn’t click with me in the way I hoped.

Rating: 2/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted March 29, 2025 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Greetings! It’s been a quiet-ish week for me in most respects, though the new raid tier has been released in FFXIV, and the Savage version releases on Tuesday, so getting ready for that is keeping me busy.

But we’re here to talk about books, so let’s get to that.

Books acquired this week

I didn’t get chance to go to the library this week, and though I technically have some money to buy a couple of books, I haven’t 100% decided which to get, so this week there’s just one book, the latest British Library Crime Classic via my subscription. It’s a bit late this month because of printing issues, and it doesn’t seem to have a matching bookmark, which makes me very sad.

Cover of Not To Be Taken: Puzzles in Poison by Anthony Berkeley

I have mixed feelings; I like reading the novels from this series as an academic interest, but sometimes misogyny etc bleed through, and that’s the case with several of Anthony Berkeley’s books, if not all. Still, I’ll give it a shot.

Posts from this week

Time for a roundup!

What I’m reading

I’ve fit in quite a bit of reading considering how much I’ve been playing FFXIV, so let’s start with the usual peek at the books I’ve finished this week which I plan to review on the blog:

Cover of Fence vol 4 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Fence vol 5 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Fence vol 6 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Cover of Jane Austen in 41 Objects by Kathryn Sutherland Cover of Solo Levelling (manhwa) vol 1, by Chugong, Debu Cover of Strange Pictures by Uketsu Cover of A Breviary of Fire by Marie Brennan

Not sure what’s next, actually, but I’ll be following my whim as always.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

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Review – The Bloodless Princes

Posted March 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Bloodless Princes

The Bloodless Princes

by Charlotte Bond

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 151
Series: The Fireborne Blade #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A tale of death, honor and true love's embrace. Come for the journey through the underworld. Stay for the minacious dragon-cat.

It seemed the afterlife was bustling.

Cursed by the previous High Mage, and following an...incident...with a supremely powerful dragon, newly-promoted High Mage Saralene visits the afterlife with a boon to beg of the Bloodless Princes who run the underworld.

But Saralene and her most trusted advisor/champion/companion, Sir Maddileh, will soon discover that there’s only so much research to be done by studying the old tales, though perhaps there’s enough truth in them to make a start.

Saralene will need more than just her wits to leave the underworld, alive. And Maddileh will need more than just her Fireborne Blade.

A story of love and respect that endures beyond death. And of dragons, because we all love a dragon!

Charlotte Bond’s The Bloodless Princes is a pretty immediate follow-up to The Fireborne Blade, so definitely start by reading that. It took me a little bit to get myself back into the world and characters, especially as I experienced the end of the first book as being rather dark and ambiguous, and all signs point here to Bond not… having intended that, and thinking of Maddileh and Saralene as unambiguously “good guys”, totally justified in what they did, without any hint of darkness about it. But… sorry, no matter how awful someone has been, using weird dragon/blood magic to take over their body and thus kill them isn’t morally neutral.

Once I got past that dissonance, it was still a fun enough read, but I wasn’t expecting as much from it, since it kind of retroactively edited The Fireborne Blade to be more straightforwardly heroic than I’d originally thought it. Maddileh and Saralene become a romance plot with more than a hint of Orpheus and Eurydice, and it’s kind of predictable. There’s some fun lore, and it’s nice to understand more about the dragons and how they view their relationship with humans.

It ticks along at a good pace, and I enjoyed it for what it was, but depending on how you felt about The Fireborne Blade other than “ooh, female knight! girl power!”, it might be rather disappointing.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – If You’ll Have Me

Posted March 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – If You’ll Have Me

If You'll Have Me

by Eunnie

Genres: Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 336
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Momo Gardner is the kind of friend who’s always ready to lend a helping hand. She’s introverted, sensitive, and maybe a little too trusting, but she likes to believe the best in people. PG, on the other hand, is a bit of a lone wolf, despite her reputation for being a flirt and a player. Underneath all that cool mystery, she’s actually quick to smile, and when she falls for someone, she falls hard.

An unexpected meet-cute brings the two together, kicking off the beginning of an awkward yet endearing courtship—but with their drastically different personalities, Momo’s overprotective friend, and PG’s past coming back to haunt her, Momo and PG’s romance is put to the test.

Eunnie’s If You’ll Have Me is a really sweet book with cute character designs and a fairly simple story. Momo and PG meet at college: PG’s known for seducing every pretty girl she meets, while Momo’s never had a girlfriend. Inevitably, they meet, and PG starts to pay a lot of attention to Momo — going to events with her, comforting her when she has a bad day, replacing the charm on her bag when she loses it, etc.

Inevitably, they eventually kiss… and inevitably, their pasts get in the way. Momo’s afraid that no one will ever be interested in her because she’s not special, while PG’s been burned in the past by someone she loved assuming she was just messing around with them as well (because she didn’t speak up and say how she was feeling).

They each hurt each other in the traditional misunderstanding, and get back together in the traditional reconciliation; it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s cute, and I really like the character designs. Momo’s insecurity is well portrayed, as is PG’s sadness about not being seen for who she is. It’s a pretty quick read, and doesn’t bog down too much around the misunderstanding.

Rating: 4/5

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