Author: Nicky

Review – Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss! Vol 1

Posted August 16, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss! Vol 1

Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss!

by Nmura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 326
Series: Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss! #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Hashimoto is your average office worker—young, and prone to being pushed around by his demon boss, Shirase. His only escape is his favorite online game, and the friends he’s made within. But when he plans an offline meetup for his party, he gets the surprise of his life…!

Nmura’s Turns Out My Online Friend is my Real-Life Boss! is really cute. The reason I’m giving it such a low rating is more to do with me than with the manga itself, which I know other people can enjoy, and it’s because I have a very low threshold for embarrassment squick and the story frequently triggered it. My wife had to listen to me whimpering “oh no, oh no” so often, and suggested more than once that maybe this wasn’t the book for me…

Thing is, it is cute. And as an avid player of Final Fantasy XIV, who has met up with a friend from it, the scenario is perfectly familiar. The problem (for me) is that I cringed so hard at the misunderstandings and the sheer obliviousness of one of the characters. Few people are truly that oblivious…! And the highschooler’s crush was just — well, a highschooler’s crush, those are often pretty excruciating by definition.

So it just wasn’t really for me, but if you have a higher tolerance for characters getting into weird and embarrassing situations, making silly assumptions, etc, etc, then you might well enjoy it very much.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Worn

Posted August 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – Worn

Worn: A People's History of Clothing

by Sofi Thanhauser

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 393
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool: through the stories of these five fabrics, Sofi Thanhauser illuminates the world we inhabit in a startling new way, travelling from China to Cumbria to reveal the craft, labour and industry that create the clothes we wear.

From the women who transformed stalks of flax into linen to clothe their families in nineteenth century New England to those who earn their dowries in the cotton-spinning factories of South India today, this book traces the origins of garment-making through time and around the world. Exploring the social, economic and environmental impact of our most personal possessions, Worn looks beyond care labels to show how clothes reveal the truth about what we really care about.

Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn is definitely a people’s history of clothing, and really more a history of fabric production than of clothing per se. There are so many points in clothing’s life cycle that Worn doesn’t even touch on, but it takes a good look at the production of fabrics like silk, cotton, linen, wool and synthetics: how they were first produced, how they’re produced now, their impact on the environment, and most of all their impact on the people who are involved in their manufacture, from the field to the factory.

I was hoping for something a bit more focused on clothing, rather than generally on fabric — I think there’s a meaningful distinction to be made between a history specifically about clothes and a history about fabric, and this is decidedly the latter, when I was looking for the former.

That said, I did find it interesting and enjoyable, and Thanhauser clearly put in a lot of time to ensure she heard the voices of those making fabric. There’s plenty of people writing books about clothes, and fabric is definitely a worthy part of the story. I’d have just picked a different title and subtitle.

Rating: 4/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted August 14, 2024 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

WWW Wednesday questions:

  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you currently reading?
  • What are you planning on reading next?

Here goes!

Cover of The Long History of the Future: Why tomorrow's technology still isn't here by Nicole KobieWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was The Long History of the Future, by Nicole Kobie. If you’ve ever wondered “but where’s my flying car?!” then this book is kind of the answer, digging into why things like flying cars (and robot butlers) are proving tricky to actually bring onto the market. It was pretty interesting!

Cover of A Study in Drowning by Ava ReidWhat are you currently reading?

As usual, I’m reading too much at once, but I’m most actively focusing on two: a non-fiction book about the Roman Empire, and a dark academia fantasy, A Study in Drowning. The latter contains a lot of Arthurian references (a character is called Corbenic, and of course there’s a character called Emrys Myrddin, and a legend about making foundations stay put by sacrificing a fatherless child), and it’s not really clear what it intends to do with everything it’s calling up — if anything. It seems much more interested in Faerie, which… is a weird combination.

I guess we’ll see!

The non-fiction is Gareth Harney’s Moneta: A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, which I’m enjoying greatly. It doesn’t go into too much depth on the individual coins (and really I think it ends up discussing far more than twelve), but it’s written entertainingly.

Cover of Invisible Friends by Jake M. RobinsonWhat are you planning on reading next?

Technically I grabbed Invisible Friends, by Jake M. Robinson, to be next off the pile. But I don’t know for sure, because I might be a tiny bit more in the mood for another fiction read. I guess it depends what I finish first, and what catches my eye in the moment I’m thinking about what to read next.

How about you?

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Top Ten Tuesday: On The Road

Posted August 13, 2024 by Nicky in General / 25 Comments

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday had me stumped for a bit, but it’s always fun to give it a shot, so let’s see what I can do: “Planes, Trains & Automobiles/Books Featuring Travel (books whose plots involve travel or feature modes of transportation on the cover/title)”.

Cover of The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison Cover of Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kerry Greenwood Cover of The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White Cover of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Cover of Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

  1. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. This jumped to mind right away, because it opens with Maia receiving the news that he’s the new emperor — and a swiftly-arranged airship flight to the capital to take up that position, even though an airship crash was precisely the reason for his unexpected ascendance to the throne.
  2. Murder on the Ballarat Train, by Kerry Greenwood. There’s a rich tradition of mysteries involving trains, and Phryne Fisher solves hers so stylishly.
  3. The Wheel Spins, by Ethel Lina White. This leaps to mind for the same reason: it’s set mostly though not entirely on a train, covering the course of one fateful journey in which the protagonist puts herself in danger by refusing to accept someone’s disappearance.
  4. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. The book follows the crew of the Wayfarer as they travel to a far-off part of space in order to create a wormhole that allows other people to travel faster from point A to point B, so it feels like it fits handily into this prompt!
  5. Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey. While we’re being unconventional, how about this one? Phèdre certainly travels, not just in this first book but throughout the series. This book concerns one of her first journeys, through the snow of Skaldia home to Terre d’Ange.
  6. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, by Malka Older. More mysteries and trains, but in a SF setting!
  7. The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi. Travel to a different dimension counts, right? Right?! And it’s such a fun book too.
  8. Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Murderbot is travelling! It doesn’t like it, but it sure is travelling. (Can you imagine a travelogue by Murderbot? Yikes.)
  9. The Masked City, by Genevieve Cogman. This one features a train — a Fae train, travelling between worlds! I can’t believe it wasn’t one of the first I thought of, because this is in some ways a favourite of mine in the series.
  10. Chalice, by Robin McKinley. I know, another unconventional choice, but hear me out: Mirasol ends up binding her demesne together by travelling around the whole area, doing her magic. And there’s the also the Master’s somewhat more metaphorical journey back from Fire, since he originally left the demesne to become a priest of fire. See? Travel.

Cover of The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older Cover of The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi Cover of Artificial Condition by Martha Wells Cover of The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman Cover of Chalice by Robin McKinley

This feels like… a very typical list from me, heh. Somehow it comes down to the same books in many of my posts, somehow. I guess it’s because I feel like I’m supposed to be choosing the ten representatives of whatever the theme is that I like the best, or at least like a lot.

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Review – Remarkably Bright Creatures

Posted August 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Remarkably Bright Creatures

Remarkably Bright Creatures

by Shelby Van Pelt

Genres: General, Mystery
Pages: 362
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors - until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late...

Although I found Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures in the SF/F section of Waterstones, I think people picking it up with that kind of perspective are quite likely to be disappointed. Sure, one of the protagonists is an octopus, who solves a long-standing mystery, but… it doesn’t really reckon with what that might mean, how an octopus might really think and communicate. Marcellus sounds like a human, and in many ways acts like one (the author being constrained mostly by the fact that the octopus doesn’t have a voice).

Really, it’s much more literary fiction, following a couple of main characters: the octopus, an old lady who lost her son mysteriously, and a deadbeat as he gets dumped and decides to try to find his unknown father, on the grounds he should be able to extort something out of him in order to fix his own shitty life.

It comes together fairly predictably, right down to the character who actually says something about “remarkably bright creatures”, and relies pretty heavily on coincidence. I was sort of curious about how it’d all turn out, but it just didn’t feel like my genre, or like it was really about the incredibly cool concept of an octopus solving a mystery.

In the end, a solid not-for-me.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel

Posted August 11, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel

The Nobleman's Guide to Seducing A Scoundrel

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 400
Series: The Doomsday Books #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Major Rufus d'Aumesty has unexpectedly become the Earl of Oxney, master of a remote Norman manor on the edge of the infamous Romney Marsh. There he's beset on all sides, his position contested both by his greedy uncle and by Luke Doomsday, son of a notorious smuggling clan.

The earl and the smuggler should be natural enemies, but cocksure, enragingly competent Luke is a trained secretary and expert schemer-exactly the sort of man Rufus needs by his side. Before long, Luke becomes an unexpected ally...and the lover Rufus had never hoped to find.

But Luke came to Stone Manor with an ulterior motive, one he's desperate to keep hidden even from the lord he can't resist. As the lies accumulate and family secrets threaten to destroy everything they hold dear, master and man find themselves forced to decide whose side they're really on... and what they're willing to do for love.

A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel is a delight, as usual with KJ Charles’ work. Some years have passed since the previous book, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, and Luke Doomsday is all grown up and embarking on some scheme of his own. Meanwhile Lord Oxney died, and the new Lord Oxney was raised as a draper’s son and went for a soldier, and Oxney’s family had no idea about the existence of such an heir. Into the tangle go our leads, Rufus and Luke, and of course if they’d communicate properly the story would get resolved far too fast.

Rufus is a delight. He has too much of a temper, of course, and allows himself to explode at people — some of whom richly deserve it, others who don’t (though to his credit he tries very hard not to explode in that case, and to apologise when he’s done wrong).

Luke is a lot less straightforward. Profoundly scarred, inside and out, he doesn’t much trust people and he doesn’t have much of a place in the world (except for in Sir Gareth’s household, where he grew up after his father’s death). He’s pretty amoral by most standards, but he does have his own deeply-felt convictions, once he’s willing to listen to them.

It was lovely to revisit Joss and Gareth a little, through other eyes, and lovely as well to enjoy Luke and Rufus’ story, and get some closure on other characters’ stories from the first book. I did stall a bit in the middle, because I could tell something was about to Go Down, and I wasn’t interested yet. The story obligingly waited for me, and then I tore through it to the end.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 10, 2024 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Well, it’s been a really good week reading-wise, even if I’ve generally not felt so great. And the cooler weather has been nice! Without further ado, let’s get talking about the important stuff.

Books acquired this week

Here’s the second part of my epic haul from my weekend jaunt with a friend from FFXIV! First up, some more of the non-fiction:

Cover of The Sarpedon Krater by Nigel Spivey Cover of Pyramids by Joyce Tyldesley Cover of Moneta: A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins by Gareth Harney

Cover of Twelve Caesars by Mary Beard Cover of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black

And here’s a couple of the fiction books I got (though this haul really was heavy on non-fic):

Cover of Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt Cover of Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley Cover of Elusive by Genevieve Cogman

Yep, I know: “what an eclectic mix!” 😀

Next week will mark the last bunch from this haul… just in time for a probable birthday-haul the week after, haha.

Posts from this week

Here’s a quick roundup of the reviews I posted this week:

And other posts:

What I’m reading

Right now, I’m partway through Rebecca Thorpe’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, for the promise of a cosy fantasy. I may follow up with The Spellshop (Sarah Beth Durst), because cosy sounds good for the moment.

And here are the books which I finished this week that I’ll be posting reviews of soon (or already have):

Cover of Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics by Gary Smith Cover of Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley Cover of A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles Cover of Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss! by Nmura

Cover of The Sarpedon Krater by Nigel Spivey Cover of Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van PeltCover of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black

Yep, I know: what a weird/eclectic mix!

Hope everyone’s having a good and bookish week.

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 – Trent’s Last Case

Posted August 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Trent’s Last Case

Trent's Last Case

by E.C. Bentley

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 224
Series: Philip Trent #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.

Trent’s Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns.

Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written," Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy."

I was very curious to read E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, knowing that Dorothy L. Sayers greatly admired it. It’s definitely more in Sayers’ line than, say, Christie’s or Marsh’s, with a detective character who shares some DNA with Sayers’ Wimsey. He’s not quite as clearly characterised as Peter begins to be, and his piffle isn’t quite as outrageous, but he’s a definite precursor.

That said, the pacing feels really slow, and I found Trent a mite less charming. It’s always uncomfortable when a private detective character withholds information from the police, and that thread of the story (Trent’s interactions with Murch) swiftly disappeared in a way that felt outright odd, even if Trent decided not to share his info. The police are just letting you run around all over the place, are they? And you’re the only one who thought about fingerprints? And you’re going to keep quiet when you’re fairly certain about a murderer? Hmmm.

The other way in which this is like Sayers’ work is that the detective has a love story, and as in Strong Poison, it’s pretty intimately tied up with the mystery plot. It’s resolved within the book, though, rather than being something that develops well over time.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this; there are some bits of scene-setting and characterisation that feel really vivid, and the mystery is fun once we get somewhere with it. I’d read more of Bentley’s work.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Dominion vol 2: The Sandman

Posted August 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Dominion vol 2: The Sandman

Dominion: The Sandman

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Mystery
Pages: 50
Series: Dominion #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

The second volume of Thomas Fenton’s Dominion, The Sandman, still has the weird page numbering issue I mentioned with my review of the first volume: some places say 150 pages (ish), while Amazon says 50. The version I read said 50. That said, it picked up from the first volume in a way that made sense, and it doesn’t feel like I’m missing any story, so I guess it’s a weirdness in page-numbering on the Amazon files (or just bad numbering from other places).

The second volume has Jason Ash discovering a little bit more about what’s happened to him, finding that he can read the script of angels, getting unexpected offers of help, and finding himself to be apparently psychic (at least, when he needs to be). It continues to be fairly predictable in its story beats.

It was surprising to me how swiftly the various abduction sub plots are wrapped up, and yet I’m really not sure how Jason’s story can be wrapped up satisfactorily with just one more volume of this length. I guess that remains to be seen; I remain curious enough to continue.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted August 7, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

WWW Wednesday normally asks:

  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you currently reading?
  • What are you planning on reading next?

So, without further ado…

Cover of The Sarpedon Krater by Nigel SpiveyWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was The Sarpedon Krater, by Nigel Spivey, which is about a particular Greek ceramic (a krater is a sort of bowl used for mixing wine and water), and what it’s meant to different people over the years. It digs into the artist, where the krater was actually found (in an Etruscan tomb), some of the controversies around it, and also how the scene on it might have inspired other artwork. Art history generally isn’t my thing, but I’m always willing to be curious about things, and this was an interesting detour for me.

Cover of Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van PeltWhat are you currently reading?

As ever, I have a few books on the go at once. I’ve just started Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, which isn’t as SF/F as you’d expect given one of the protagonists is an octopus. I’d file it more under literary fiction, really, and I’m feeling a little meh about at least one of the plot arcs (though it just became apparent how it links up, at least). I’ll finish it, at least, not sure yet how much I like it.

Cover of Bitter Waters by Vivian ShawWhat are you planning on reading next?

Probably Vivian Shaw’s Bitter Waters — I love the Greta Helsing trilogy, and am honestly feeling like maybe I want to reread it. Reading this new novella might be a good way to scratch that itch and decide if I really do want to reread.

How about you?

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