Author: Nicky

Review – Colour Me Mindful: Underwater

Posted October 21, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Colour Me Mindful: Underwater, Anastasia Catris

I’m not so sure about this craze for calling adult colouring books a tool for mindfulness. Whatever works for you, I guess, but I use it much more as a way to relax and just… have some fun. The delight is a childish one and I’m totally okay with that, for the same reason I’m totally okay with people reading or doing whatever appeals to them, regardless of age or gender or whatever. Modern life is pretty darn stressful for our monkey brains, and we need to remember to play.

This one delights that kid in me because it’s full of fish that you can colour in improbable combinations of colour. And quite a few turtles, which are just adorable. The paper quality is good; I use felt-tips to colour in, and it doesn’t leak through at all, which is fortunate because there are designs on both sides of all the pages. I have had slight problems with pages curling up, though, when there’s a lot of colour and therefore obviously a lot of ink. I do suggest if you’re going to use felt-tips, markers or paint, you test on one of the blank pages to make sure there’ll be no leakage with your particular implement of choice.

The designs pretty much all have some small fiddly bits, but not so much so that I found it frustrating.

Also, Anastasia Catris apparently lives in Wales, so hurrah for that.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crafts

Review – Made to Kill

Posted October 20, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Made to Kill, Adam Christopher
Received to review via Netgalley

You might know from my reviews of another Angry Robot alumnus, Chris Holm, that I kind of love the hardboiled pulp mystery fiction by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. This is basically exactly that… except you add a robot and his equally electronic handler, Ada; the robot has a limited 24-hour memory because his memory’s on tapes; and the electronic handler has a prime directive of “profit” and nothing to keep her on the straight and narrow.

There’s an interesting story in the background, too: Ray discovering what he does during what are essentially blackouts; the whole background with Ada and Ray’s creator; the manipulations of Ray’s memory by Ada; Ray’s discovery that he’s being used as a murder weapon… Wisely, I think, this fascinating stuff is kept as background. It keeps you wondering what exactly Ada’s up to, it means you know about Ray’s limited memory and how he can be manipulated, but it focuses on an immediate mystery and leaves all that background to keep you wondering and coming up with your own red herrings.

Adam Christopher doesn’t quite have the style and originality of Chandler (there’s no phrases like “shop-worn Galahad” to delight the senses), but the writing is slick and functional in the best way. I read the whole thing in just over an hour, without stopping, without ever catching up on a snag that made me want to stop. He uses the robot nature of his protagonist in great ways to add detail, uses the limitations of the character to convey expressions and emotions. The robot technology is also kept at just the right level: sure, Ray can take pictures using his eyes, but they’re stored on film and he only has four rolls of film at a time. Ada runs on tapes. The technology is clunky, old-fashioned.

The plot itself is classic and I’m not gonna spoil it by giving you any clues. There’s some staples of pulp fiction here, though, and it’s good for a knowing smile, makes you want to wear a trenchcoat and a natty hat.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Adam Christopher, book reviews, books, mystery, SF/F

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 20, 2015 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

This week’s prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is “10 Wishes I’d Ask The Book Genie To Grant Me”.

Well.

Auto-approval on Netgalley for everything. Especially Tor.
Budget and unlimited space at local community library. Please?
Free publicity for the above. We need more readers.
A TARDIS for personal book storage. This one’s obvious if you know me at all… and hey, I could use it to travel to my partner’s and take all my stuff!
Digital and print copies in the same purchase. Wouldn’t bundles like this make life so much easier?
Time spent reading pauses “real life”. Then I could get soooo much more done.
More library cards. And more libraries, come to that.
A conversation with Mori from Among Others, when she’s 26. Seems like it might, you know, be relevant to me.
Ability to slap some characters and say no don’t do that. FitzChivalry Farseer, I’m looking at you.
The ability to read some books for the first time… again. ’nuff said, right? Some books, you just wish you could come to them fresh again.

I could probably keep going for a while on this topic…

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Shadow and Bone

Posted October 19, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo

I was vaguely not-interested in Shadow and Bone after reading a couple of negative reviews, which I think particularly mentioned the Russian influences and then overall not-Russian-at-all, fairly typical fantasy world setting. This is true, and if it’s something that will bother you, then yes, steer clear. However… I picked this up from the library at five o’ clock, walked to the station, got the train home, walked up the hill home, mostly without reading… and by six o’ clock, had got two thirds of the way through the book anyway. It was a fast read, and it was compelling.

Now granted, yeah, there’s some typical YA stuff going on — there’s a love triangle, for one. It came across quite well for me, though. I think it helped that Mal and Alina have such a clear bond, which has been confused in realistic ways as they grew up. And the Darkling has an obvious allure, and you can see why people trust him, want to be near him. I like the development of Alina’s powers, and her interactions with people around her. For a book with a guy called the Darkling and a main character who is a “Sun Summoner”, there’s a fair amount of ambiguity going on — there are several characters who don’t clearly align on a good/bad matrix.

Overall… I don’t quite know why I enjoyed this so much. Probably it matched my mood, in part, and it wasn’t a challenging read, while I wasn’t in a great mood. I’ll be interested to see how I react to the second and third books.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Leigh Bardugo, SF/F

Review – Ask a Policeman

Posted October 18, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Ask A Policeman, John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Milward Kennedy

I think the books and stories the Detection Club did together must have been a lot of fun to do and to share around with other writers, but they come off less well for someone outside that context, and particularly given that many of the authors and detectives are no longer well-known. Sayers/Lord Peter were the only ones I knew from this bunch, so the parody and playing in other people’s sandboxes doesn’t really interest me.

Going through the same murder in however many different ways just… didn’t interest me enough. The parody of Sayers was quite fun, since I know what Wimsey is like, but other than that, I found this fairly boring. Alas.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery

Review – Binti

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor

I keep meaning to read Okorafor’s work, but Who Fears Death was a bad fit when I picked it up, and my copy of Lagoon has gone AWOL. Which left this as my introduction — maybe not a bad thing, because it’s fairly bitesize, without being truncated. I wasn’t sure what to think of it until I was talking with Robert from my book club, though, where he noted that at the start of the book, things begin to happen due to Binti’s merit. She gets herself into university, and she’s brave enough to leave her family and set out into the unknown. After that, though, it’s luck: she couldn’t know that the things she took with her would be useful, had no idea how to make them useful, and basically just happened to survive and do well because of her background.

It feels almost like message fiction: sometimes, someone from an unprivileged background can make good because they bring new tools which other people wouldn’t consider. That’s not a bad message, and the story and world-building is reasonably entertaining… but. The conflict essentially ends by 20% in — after that, Binti no longer has to rely on her own resources. She just happens to have the right things with her.

That’s a bit of a simplification, but it does weaken the story for me. It starts off strongly, and the world is interesting — Binti’s people, the way things are set up, the aliens — but then… I began to feel as if it would turn out okay because Binti was special somehow. Having a special protagonist who is insulated from harm makes suspense and intrigue difficult.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, short stories

Readathon Progress Post

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Good afternoon, everyone! It’s almost time for the readathon, so I thought I’d get my progress post up and running. All my updates will be in here, unless the post starts getting ridiculously long, in which case I might start a new one. Let’s start by showing off my stack (or, you know, some of it).

Of course, who knows whether I’ll stick to that, because I am a contrary creature…

Here’s the introductory meme!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Cardiff, UK. And since I’m Welsh, you can expect some squealing about the rugby as well, I’m afraid.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I don’t know, I’m quite looking forward to rereading Old Man’s War. Or maybe Magic Slays; Ilona Andrews’ work is always fun.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Salted caramel chocolate Cadbury fingers. Mmmm.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m a ghostwriter and will be looking with interest to see if anybody’s reading books I’ve had anything to do with… not that I can tell you if you are.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? I’m pretty in the swing of it, now. I’ll sleep if I have to and read joyously if not, and not beat myself up too much about either outcome.

13.31: Well, I’ve started with Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates. I actually tried to read this before and did not get on with it, so I’m a little surprised to find myself enjoying it.

14.24: Just did the Cover Escape challenge, and now it’s back to curling up with Phryne. Yeesh, it’s cold here in Wales!

15.26: I’m strangely slow at reading, today! I thought I’d easily get Phryne polished off in two hours. Ah well, enjoying it.

16.34: Now finished my first book! Not sure what’s next, being social a little bit first.

17.44: Have started reading Hollow City. Accidentally spoilered myself about the end, oops. About 1/4 of the way through.

18.27: More than halfway through Hollow City now. Break for dinner! Wales lost in the rugby, sigh.

21.02: Whoops, where is the time going? (Cue some Sandy Denny!) Listening to music to liven me up again and taking a break to chat. I’m 1/3 of the way through Murder Past Due, and 3/4 of the way through Hollow City — I was flagging a bit, so I changed it up for a while.

22.07: Finished Hollow City! I think I’m going to see if I can have a bath… books to go in with me: The Moonspinners (Mary Stewart) and Murder Past Due (Miranda James).

01.07: Well, I read The Moonspinners in the bath, completing my third book. But now I feel a bit sick, and I have work and book club tomorrow, so I’m going to get some sleep now. Back in the morning!

09.39: I’m back! I actually ended up reading over half of another book till I could fall asleep, so I’m now halfway through Dark Entries (Robert Aickman).

10.59: Finished Dark Entries. Now I’m going to settle back down with Murder Past Due, and see if I can finish a fifth book this readathon.

12.19: Now I’ve finished Murder Past Due. I’m wrapping up with some organisational stuff rather than reading more.

Tags: readathon

Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

This has been an unexpectedly busy week again, since friends have been super nice to me (particularly Lynn and Robert), and Mum ended up with some Amazon vouchers from surveys! Which is really nice, because it is a stressful time. This week my grandmother’s going to have her operation for cancer, so I would really, really appreciate good thoughts sent her way.

Anyway, back to the books!

Won

I liked The Errant Prince a lot, so yay for this! Looking forward to reading it. Thank you, Sasha L. Miller!

Dead tree books

I was instructed to get something light and escapist and easy, and Magic Slays will be exactly that for me. And research, since paranormal romance is a genre I ghostwrite in… Dark Metropolis apparently has a bunch of LGBTQ characters, including an ace character.

Ebooks

A rather random mix, really! A few of these I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

Library

Another mixed bag, really! My Brother Michael and The Grand Sophy are rereads grabbed for the readathon this weekend (post coming soon).

What’s everyone else been getting?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves

Review – Embassytown

Posted October 16, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Embassytown, China Miéville
Originally reviewed 26th October, 2012

Miéville’s work is never easy for me — I always have to work for it — so I get a little contemptuous of people who just read fifty pages and give up, even though I do that plenty with other books. I always have to give Miéville plenty of leeway: he gets to a place where he blows my mind in the end, but it might take half the book before I’m starting to see it.

So it was with Embassytown, and not helped by the fact that I’m in a bit of a depressed phase at the moment and everything is Too Much Effort. But I got there eventually, and when I did, I didn’t want to put the book down for a second. I stayed up to finish it, last night, and felt breathlessly excited at the twists and turns.

I can understand the criticisms that there aren’t really any well-defined/sympathetic/unique characters (maybe if there’d been more of Spanish Dancer?), but in Miéville’s work there’s always plenty that makes up for it, for me. His cities are pretty much characters, both a collection of separate organisms and an organism in themselves, and his world-building is second to very, very few. I loved the concept of Language, and the way it became language. I just. Flail.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, China Miéville, Flashback Friday, SF/F

Review – The Wicked + The Divine: Fandemonium

Posted October 15, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Wicked + The Divine: Fandemonium, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson

I wish I had the first volume here, so I could have flipped through it again and got myself quickly back on board for this one. Not that it took too much to get sucked back into it, but in terms of the mystery, I couldn’t remember who I suspected of doing what and why! The characters stuck in my head, too, at least their roles, but their names didn’t. Partly my fault, because I’m not a visual person at all and I can’t ever connect names to faces, let alone in the second volume of a comic I’ve read once before. It doesn’t help that McKelvie’s style is much the same as it was for Young Avengers — I think, “Hey, that character looks familiar… no, I’m thinking of America Chavez.” Sigh.

The art is, as in the first volume, absolutely gorgeous. I don’t think I could imagine The Wicked + The Divine in any other style — it’s perfect this way. In many ways, this volume complicates the plot more, introducing more characters, more background, more twists. There’s still a lot more to discover, and despite the relative thickness of the book, I wanted more, right away, right now.

Please?

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics