Author: Nicky

Review – The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu

Posted June 8, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie EnglishThe Book Smugglers of Timbuktu, Charlie English

This story is, in general, more impressive until you get to the bit at the end where doubt is cast on the veracity of some of the modern stories. It feels really cheap to get to the end and read this critique that suggests things presented as fact never occurred, and the things that do appear to have been true may be rather overexaggerated. It feels dishonest in a way that it wouldn’t have done if these critiques were presented side by side with the accounts, and it makes me wonder about the author’s integrity in the other parts of the book as well.

I mean, reading it credulously, it’s a heck of a story and these people are heroes. And surely, surely, you think, the author must have done his research to verify these accounts as far as possible. And then you find out, well, he did, but he didn’t feel like saying so at the time.

Tell the story, by all means. It’s a heck of a story after all, and it remains absorbing even if you know there are questions about it — but if you only know that at the end and look back, well, it all seems a bit of a sham, and can you really trust the author to tell the ancient story straight?

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

Posted June 7, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret KilljoyThe Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, Margaret Killjoy

This one is kind of like an origin story for a hunter in Supernatural, only with more women and people in general who aren’t co-dependent white dudes, and deeply connected to an anarchic, footloose sort of life — the characters are all travellers and squatters, some more settled than others, which I found a fascinating new skew on the world. New to me, I mean; I’m neither an anarchist nor at all footloose.

There’s some really creepy-feeling stuff here, like the giant demon murderstag — not so much creepy in the “I don’t want to keep reading, gaaaah” sense, you know, where you start worrying a hand is going to come out from under the bed and grab your ankle if you get out of bed, but just wrong and unsettling.

And, you know, all the undead animals that would normally be hunted. There was something about the pacing that made me feel hurried through it, though; something I just didn’t quite get hold of. I’m sort of curious to read the sequel, but then I’m not sure (embarrassingly) that I’ve really grasped the characters and will remember all their interactions and relationships even if I pick it up really soon. Even though I found it different in terms of the cast and even refreshing for that, I’m mostly left with the murder deer, and he’s exited stage right at this point.

Still, I’ll probably give it a try!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Seafarer’s Kiss

Posted June 3, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Seafarer's Kiss by Julia EmberThe Seafarer’s Kiss, Julia Ember

This one sounds pretty exciting: queer retelling of The Little Mermaid, with Ursula as the heroine, including a Norse warrior girl and visits from the god Loki. There was a lot to like about this: I enjoyed the strength of Ersel’s relationship with her mother, and the complicatedness of her relationship with her friend. Loki’s character is also rather enjoyable: they’re genderfluid, and a true trickster: you’re never quite sure what they want and why.

Ultimately, it did feel a little thin to me at times, though, and the general background of misogyny and nastiness toward the female merpeople was a little unbearable to read. Not that I’d expected pure sunshine and puppies, but I wasn’t quite ready for the torture and enforced pregnancies, etc, etc. I could’ve done with more development of the relationship between Ersel and Ragna, too: it started well, but I found myself wondering how well they really knew each other at all, how likely it would be for their bond to actually be stable and lasting, given all the differences between them and the slenderness of their acquaintance.

So, an interesting retelling, but not in the end my thing.

Rating: 2/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 2, 2018 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Technically, I think this might be an unStacking week, but I found some books I never featured so hey! They get their chance to shine this week. Also, I haven’t been doing much unstacking anyway, given that I am hurtling towards my final exams (and caught a horrible stupid virus).

But first, of course, here’s a bunny pic, since I’m still away from them. Breakfast wants to know what y’all are doing!

And here’s the new(ish) books!

New books:

Cover of The Vikings by Else Roesdahl Cover of Stealing History Cover of The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi Cover of The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles

A rather random assemblage, but that will surprise no one when it comes to me!

Books read this week:

Cover of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente Cover of The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M Valente Cover of The Girl who Soared Over Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente Cover of The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

Reviews posted this week:

–Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, by Christopher de Hamel. I found this really relaxing to read, just something where I could let tons of information wash over me while enjoying descriptions of beautiful books. 4/5 stars
–Seven Dead, by J. Jefferson Farjeon. Melodramatic, of course, but also oddly compelling just from the weirdness of the opening. 4/5 stars
–On a Red Station, Drifting, by Aliette de Bodard. This writer has a gift for complex characters you can’t quite root for, but who seem very human all the same. (Even when they’re not.) I enjoyed this, and I’m looking forward to trying more of the stories in the same world. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–Discussion: Romance. Tl;dr? Don’t knock romance just because it’s not your thing.
–WWW Wednesday. The weekly update on what’s on my plate or, er, stack right now. Spoiler: too many books at once.

So, what’re you reading? Stacking your shelves with anything fascinating? I can’t promise I’ll comment back immediately (EXAM TIME!), but I always do visit back in the end!

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Review – On A Red Station, Drifting

Posted June 1, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de BodardOn A Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard

I kept not picking this up for the longest time because I had a vague memory of reading it and not ‘getting’ it, and thus I also avoided other books in the same world. Wrong! I’ve no idea what book I was thinking of, but it wasn’t this one: some aspects of the culture are a little bit opaque to me, like the significance of the poem that is a key moment for the characters, but it was a fascinating read. The characters are complex: not necessarily likeable, in fact most of them aren’t, but human. You can see why they do the things they do; it’s complicated, and there’s no easy answer to who is right and who is wrong.

I think I was most intrigued by the Honoured Ancestress, and her place in the story. Of course I thought of Iain M. Bank’s Culture novels first, and the Minds, but clearly this isn’t just like that. I found the AI’s distress at falling apart and failing one of the most affecting parts of the story: feeling your mind crumble from within…

Definitely interested in reading more in this world. Not sure what book steered me wrongly away from this through resemblance in title or cover, but it was lying.

Rating: 4/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 30, 2018 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha LeeFar too much at once! I’ve decided exam time is a terrible time for self-restraint, so I’m dipping in and out of a whole stack: Revenant Gun (Yoon Ha Lee), Murder in Piccadilly (Charles Kingston), The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Cat Valente), Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) and The Shadow in the North (Philip Pullman). I accidentally picked up Revenant Gun just this morning and started racing through it; I shall send Yoon Ha Lee a stern fan note if I fail my exams because of it.

(I won’t actually fail my exams.)

The Valente’s a reread, of course; I felt like I needed something fun. Children of Time is newly picked up, mostly because it fell off my shelf at me, and who can argue with fate? I’m fascinated, I’ll Cover of Children of Time by Adrian Tchiakovskyadmit. Speculative biology is a thing I can get behind. (I’m not sure how the virus could possibly work, though. Must be a DNA virus; RNA viruses don’t have good proofreading mechanisms, there’d be no way at all to control the behaviour of the virus over generations — not even generations of primates, but viral generations. Not sure DNA viruses are that much better at proofreading either…)

What have you recently finished reading?

Cover of The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip PullmanI picked up and reread Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke completely on a whim, in between one block of studying and another. I still enjoyed it a lot; it’s rather Penny Dreadful-ish itself, in some ways, and I’m not sure about all the Orientalism at all. Still, as a nostalgia read it’s a solid one, and Sally’s still amazing. O for half of her skill with numbers and steady hand (though she can keep the pistol).

What will you be reading next?

It would be daft to try and guess, I think. More of the Fairyland books, definitely; I also plan to reread Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar books (I know, it doesn’t sound comforting/soothing if you know how heartbreaking those books are, but they’re so familiar and from a totally different part of my academic career).

Other than that, I don’t know. Maybe Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside; I did bring it with me in hopes of getting stuck in. Or Arabella and the Battle of Venus… or…

So! What are you reading?

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Review – Seven Dead

Posted May 29, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Seven Dead by J. Jefferson FarjeonSeven Dead, J. Jefferson Farjeon

This is a really entertaining entry into the British Library Crime Classics line-up: the premise had me from the word go, for sure. It’s a locked room mystery with a rather creepy beginning: a would-be burglar stumbles on a room full of corpses in a seemingly empty house. There’s a serious romantic plot that I think might put some readers off, especially as it involves a guy getting rather creepily fixated on a painting of a young girl and deciding he has to know her (though at least he knows she’s an adult now); sometimes it doesn’t feel like the primary point is the mystery, but instead the relationship between two people who are mostly on the edge of it.

There’s also some rather odd banter between the inspector and the policeman who works with him. Sometimes I seemed to be missing context — which makes no sense, considering they weren’t supposed to know each other long before the case, so it should all be perfectly comprehensible — and sometimes it just seemed like the dialogue was trying to be too clever.

Nonetheless, it’s entertaining and the weirdness of that opening kept me interested in how the mystery itself worked out. Unlike with some of the other books reissued by the British Library for the Classic Crime series, I do actually find myself rather eager to pick up another book by Farjeon, instead of just pleasantly entertained but not ready to leap on it. The Z Murders and Thirteen Guests are now on my TBR pile.

Rating: 4/5

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Discussion: Romance

Posted May 28, 2018 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

I’m not primarily a romance blogger, or even frequently, but I do pick up the occasional romance — usually not contemporaries, at least not for straight romance, though there’s Susanna Kearsley, but more classic stuff like Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart. (I do read LGBT romance, but that’s a rather separate genre in many ways.) I think that mostly lets me duck some of the rubbish said about romance books: I don’t constantly get shamed for the interest, though I’ve seen that attitude out there. Heck, my grandma always dismisses what she reads as ‘penny dreadfuls’, and as far as I can tell at least some of it is mushy romance and family sagas (though she also likes Dorothy Dunnett, so there’s that for comparison).

I can totally understand people for whom romance isn’t a thing they want to read about — but I do hate the attitude that reading romance is pointless or inferior in general. First off, I don’t believe in disparaging people for what they enjoy, because enjoyment is something humans crave and even need. And secondly, I hate the attitude that reading romance is just escapism or whatever: it deals with powerful emotions that real people feel and have to deal with, and with relationships between people and how they’re negotiated. I don’t know how anyone can act like reading about the invention of flying cars is more important than reading about how to navigate complex human relationships!

Like any genre, romance has its problems. It comes with a whole bag of tropes that can be really problematic, and romance just isn’t a priority for a lot of people (or even an interest at all for some). That’s great. But let’s not label it as pointless for everyone in every situation — and that’s the attitude that comes across sometimes, especially when people just dip into the genre and talk about it as a “guilty pleasure” or “a bit of fluff”… or a “penny dreadful”. It just sounds so dismissive.

Fiction is, for the most part, designed to entertain the reader. Let’s not disparage romance just for being really successful at doing that!

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Review – Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts

Posted May 28, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Meetings With Remarkable ManuscriptsMeetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, Christopher de Hamel

Most of us will never get to handle the real copies of the Hengwrt Chaucer or the Book of Hours made for Jeanne of Navarre, but this book gets you pretty close, with Christopher de Hamel describing how each book looks and feels (though smell, on reflection, is lacking), and even how they’re stored and the reading rooms he visited to handle them. He describes where each manuscript has been, too, and what’s brought it to wherever it now lives. There’s a lot of detail, much of it focusing on the brilliant illuminations of some of these manuscripts (meaning that manuscripts without illuminations that nonetheless have great literary value are missed out), with a lot of black and white reproductions, and a few glossy full colour inserts.

I found it fascinating: it probably depends on whether this is something you’re interested in. I found it one of those restful reads where I could let a lot of the information wash over me: interesting at the time, but I don’t need to know it. (Unlike, say, specific examples of post-mating, prezygotic reproductive barriers. Did you know that various species of North American field crickets are reproductively isolated with each other because, though they can mate, the sperm fails to fertilise the eggs in heterospecific pairs? Now you know, or at least, it’s washed over you. I need to know it until the 11th June.)

Anyway, the point is, I really enjoyed it, though I doubt I’ve retained even half of the information. It can be a bit dense if this isn’t your interest, though.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted May 26, 2018 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

Good morning, everyone! I’m in the UK again ready for my exams, and getting up bright and early every day to study. So it’s no surprise that I’ve, uh, had quite a haul and not managed to read much. But before we get into that, here’s the obligatory bunny pictures!

Hulk sat in an office chair looking stern
She looks stern, but she just wants a piece of banana. You know you want to give her one.
“Oh no! The paps caught me cleaning my paws!”

I miss ’em, even though they’re a pile of chaos.

Received to review:

Cover of Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang Cover of The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams Cover of Redemption's Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Cover of The Chrysalis by Brendan Deneen Cover of Shelter by Dave Hutchinson

I also now have a paperback copy of Yoon Ha Lee’s Revenant Gun to go with the ebook! Now I definitely must hurry and read it.

Bought this week:

Cover of The Lake District Murder by John Bude Cover of Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull Cover of Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjohn

Cover of Death of Anton by Alan Melville Cover of The Dead Shall Be Raised & Death of a Quack by Goerge Bellairs Cover of A Scream in Soho by John G. Brandon

Cover of Arabella and the Battle of Venus by David D. Levine Cover of Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky Cover of The Amazons by John Man

Yay, more British Library Crime Classics! I think there are two more in the post, too… Better be the last of the books for a while, heh.

Read this week:

Cover of Hardian's Wall by David Breeze and Brian Dobson

Yep, that’s the sum total.

Reviewed this week:

–The Great Mortality, by John Kelly. A historical look at the Black Death, how it started and how it spread. Less science details than I’d have liked! 3/5 stars
–Death on the Cherwell, by Mavis Doriel Hay. Entertaining, but not a patch on that other book written in the Golden Age about a women’s college in Oxford. 3/5 stars
–Keeping Their Marbles, by Tiffany Jenkins. One of my more in-depth and conflicted reviews in quite a while. This book examines the case for repatriating artefacts and remains, and the author’s opinion is a resounding “don’t”. I struggle with that. 3/5 stars
–The Fisher of Bones, by Sarah Gailey. Some fascinating ideas, and particularly the ending, but it felt more like a sketch map than a painting. 3/5 stars
–Brimstone, by Cherie Priest. This one worked for me because of the strength of the characters. I’m not sure it’s Priest’s most memorable book, but I enjoyed reading it and definitely got invested. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. The usual update!

And now, studying… What’s everyone else up to?

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