Author: Nicky

Review – The Honey Witch

Posted November 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Honey Witch

The Honey Witch

by Sydney J. Shields

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 348
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Marigold Claude is entering another season without any intentions of accepting a proposal. When her eccentric grandmother Althea visits and finally provides an explanation for Marigold's strange magical abilities, they return to the Lake Isle of Innisfree where she begins training as a Honey Witch-an apothecary and alchemist who uses her magical connection with the bees to create enchanted honey for her spells.

While this lovely power leaves her especially adept at helping others find love, it also comes with an ancient curse that none have been able to break: no one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.

When Lottie Burke, a notorious grumpy skeptic who doesn't believe in magic, accompanies her best friend to the cottage for a love spell, Marigold can't resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. She invites Lottie and her best friend, August Owens, to stay with her for the summer to prove her abilities, but Marigold begins to care for Lottie in a way she never expected.

She longs to break the curse and escape her lonely fate, but when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her freedom-at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.

I was kinda prepared for Sydney J. Shields’ The Honey Witch to be mediocre, based on a few reviews I’d read beforehand — I ended up getting it in a sale, just to give it a shot. It’s a semi-cosy fantasy romance which ends up involving rather a lot of dramatic bleeding, burning, death during a sex scene, enslavement, poisoning, etc. It tries for a sort of cottagecore aesthetic over the top, but the dramatic story that provides the set-up makes that pretty impossible.

It’s also just… not very good, with more plot holes than Proud Immortal Demon Way, and I absolutely refuse to die and become one of the characters to fix it (shoutout to the two danmei fans in my audience; sorry to the rest of you, I just couldn’t resist — this was a reference to The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System). For example, the main character’s grandmother is a Honey Witch. She has an enemy, an Ash Witch, who cursed her so that she can never be loved, with the stated intention of ending her bloodline.

However…

1. I don’t know if the author needs this explained or something, but you don’t have to be in love to have sex and conceive a child.
2. The main character’s grandmother can (and did) have a child parthenogenically.
3. Even though the main character’s mother chose her true love over being a Honey Witch and gave up her power, her child inherited the power and could become a Honey Witch.

So… there is no sense in which the curse works for the stated purpose, even if you assume you have to be in love to have a baby in this world (which is never stated).

The world-building is also incredibly clunky. It’s a Regency-ish world, and we’re given to understand in the opening that there are distinctive gender roles for men and women, which the main character wants to flout by becoming a witch. Except… it becomes apparent that same-sex relationships are totally fine and celebrated, including by the main character’s family. Yet no thought is given to the effect that might have on gender roles.

I don’t even want to get into the enemies-to-lovers thing going on with Lottie and Marigold, or the sex scene which literally kills Lottie (and is kind of horrifying to just come across without being aware that it’s not a steamy scene, a character is literally going to die mid-scene, even if she gets better because magic).

It’s… it’s just really not good, folks, and I didn’t even like the style. It felt like we’re just expected as readers to instantly get invested in things like Marigold’s relationship with her grandmother (who she hasn’t seen since she was a child) or friendship with August (likewise), or her interest in Lottie, a girl who can barely even be polite to her for the first half of the book.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – The Deep Dark

Posted November 17, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Deep Dark

The Deep Dark

by Lee Knox Ostertag

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 470
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Everyone has secrets. Mags's has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there's her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won't get attached, of course. She's always been strong enough to survive without anyone's help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.

I found Lee Knox Ostertag’s The Deep Dark a little predictable in a way — almost familiar, really made me wonder if I’d maybe read it before? But I don’t think so. Anyway, I wouldn’t say that finding it predictable was a bad thing, to be clear: it was more about the connection between Nessa and Mags for me, the path they took to the ending, than about being stunningly original.

It’s about self-blame and acceptance, even when it’s really, really hard. Yeah, it’s obvious as a metaphor when you get there, but that doesn’t make it any less of an important story. And the relationship between Nessa and Mags is in part about learning you don’t just have to go it on your own, and again, about finding self-worth… all of these are stories worth telling, especially with a trans girl and a butch girl as the protagonists.

I always really like Ostertag’s art, and I liked this too — character design, expressions, etc.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Eating to Extinction

Posted November 17, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Eating to Extinction

Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need To Save Them

by Dan Saladino

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 464
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2022 - Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, showing why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.

From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change.

Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It is about the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.

Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction has a certain amount of inherent repetition: we’re losing a lot of rare and traditional foods because of monocultures, cultural homogenisation, loss of habitat, etc. Each example can start to feel like it’s really hammering home the point a bit too much, though it does help that the chapters are arranged by theme and he discusses a few representative cereal crops, a few representative animal breeds, etc.

Even though it’s a bit repetitive — and at times really sad, because we’re losing so much, some of which we barely know we have — I found it really fascinating to read through the various examples. It made me wonder about how things taste, whether I’d like them; I’m aware that in being quite sensitive to taste and texture, I benefit from a fairly homogenised world where a burger will always taste pretty much the same within fairly narrow boundaries, for instance. My snacks are alike, bag for bag, without a great deal of variation (if any) within a brand. But I’m still sure that there are tastes I’d love out there, things that would be worth trying.

As with so many things, the main story here is that humans are exploiting the environment and making changes that are going to shoot us in the foot. Monocultures are bad, and if we’re not careful, we could see huge famines. We’re losing genetic diversity in our food crops in searching for bigger and bigger yields, sometimes for good reason (to feed hungry people) and sometimes for mere profit.

I was already pretty alive to the problems of stuff like battery farm chickens, monoculture, etc; it wasn’t a wakeup call for me so much as a nudge to keep thinking about it, and to find ways to act, because awareness isn’t enough. And Saladino makes an excellent case for the delights we’re missing out on, and may lose forever.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – So Far So Good

Posted November 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – So Far So Good

So Far So Good

by Ursula Le Guin

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 100
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin was lauded by millions for her ground- breaking science fiction novels, but she began as a poet, and wrote across genres for her entire career. In this clarifying and sublime collection--completed shortly before her death in 2018--Le Guin is unflinching in the face of mortality, and full of wonder for the mysteries beyond. Redolent of the lush natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, with rich sounds playfully echoing myth and nursery rhyme, Le Guin bookends a long, daring, and prolific career.

Ursula Le Guin’s So Far So Good was her last collection of poetry, with her edits sent in just before her death. I wouldn’t say that’s particularly obvious in the poems — she’s no more preoccupied with death than she ever was, in this collection, at least.

They didn’t all land for me, but there are some lovely ones, and Le Guin’s way with language and imagery is always in evidence. Here’s a favourite, “On Second Hill”:

Where on this wild hill alone
a child watched the evening star,
let these bits of ash and bone
rejoin the earth they always were,
the earth that let her sing her love,
the gift that made the giver
here on the lonely hill above
the valley of the river.

Very typical Le Guin, of course.

An enjoyable collection, and reminded me that I haven’t read all her poetry but have at least one of her other collections from an old Humble Bundle… off to check whether I’ve read that!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 15, 2025 by Nicky in General / 22 Comments

It’s the weekend, and I at least am very ready for it!

Books acquired this week

My monthly British Library Crime Classic arrived! Not one of the authors I like best, but it should be fun anyway.

Cover of Death in High Heels by Christianna Brand

I’ve started on it already.

Posts from this week

Time for a bit of a roundup, especially since I’ve been posting extra reviews this week. I still have many more waiting to be posted, but hopefully with a couple extra per week, I won’t get a post backlog that’s too silly… As usual, here are all the links to the full reviews!

Other posts:

What I’m reading

It’s been a bit of a quieter week, reading-wise, with some pretty disappointing reads. Ah well, it happens! Here’s a peek as usual at the books I intend to review on the blog:

Cover of The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned by John Strausbaugh Cover of Home Sick Pilots vol 3 by Dan Watters Cover of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 4 by Xue Shan Fei Hu Cover of Eat Me by Bill Schutt

Cover of Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes, by Shahidha Bari Cover of Strangers and Intimates by Tiffany Jenkins Cover of The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

Over the weekend… I’ll probably work on finishing up with Christianna Brand’s Death in High Heels, which I have in progress, and I hope to get chance to read more of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation too. Other than that, I’m not sure; I randomly started on Andrew Ziminski’s Church Going: A Stonemason’s Guide to the Churches of the British Isles last night, and might focus on that.

In the end, though, it’s all down to whatever whim strikes me!

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

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Review – I Could Murder Her

Posted November 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – I Could Murder Her

I Could Murder Her

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 191
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Muriel Farrington is a domineering woman who, unfortunately for them, has her entire family living with her in her stately home. She tries, often successfully, to run the lives of her children, her stepchildren, her in-laws, and her husband, and she seems to be despised by all except her husband and one son.

When she is found dead one morning in her bed, the family doctor, who is old, ill, and hasn’t been very able for years, is unable to attend and bestow a certificate, which he would have done without investigation or thought.

A younger, more able and perceptive doctor has to be called in, to the shock of whoever the murderer was, and he does not find the death natural...

I Could Murder Her features E.C.R. Lorac’s series detective, Inspector Macdonald, digging once more into a tense net of family relationships and rivalries in order to discover who murdered their (rather awful) matriarch, who was a bit of a strangling vine. There are a couple of very likeable characters — straightforward, capable, earnest — of the type Lorac’s so good at writing, people with good hearts, and I didn’t guess the murderer this time at all.

It’s possible I should’ve seen it coming, because Macdonald and his subordinate seem to have had their eyes on it the whole time, but I suppose I didn’t really want it to be that character. For all that each book features an almost completely new cast, I can’t help but end up caring about Lorac’s characters, and feeling strongly about some of them.

Whiiiich means that at the end of this book I ended up feeling decidedly uncosy and unhappy, because I didn’t want that person to be the murderer and the effects on all the other characters would be awful as a result. It’s still a good mystery, and a good example of Lorac’s writing; personally it didn’t entirely work because I didn’t want it to end like that, but that tells you something about Lorac’s ability to make a reader care. Even though most of her books stand alone, each one gets me fully invested.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Vampyre

Posted November 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Vampyre

The Vampyre

by John William Polidori

Genres: Classics, Fantasy
Pages: 54
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Lord Ruthven is a mysterious newcomer among England’s social elite. A young gentleman named Aubrey is fascinated by the suave stranger and is intrigued by his often curious behaviour. While travelling in Europe amid rumours of vampire killings, the pair are attacked, leaving Ruthven on his death bed. As he draws his last breaths, he pleads with Aubrey to keep his death a secret for just over a year. When Ruthven reappears in London alive and well, Aubrey realises that his friend might be hiding dark and horrifying truths behind his seductive fabrication.

The Vampyre was written during the ‘Lost Summer of 1816’, when John William Polidori was among the group of friends who accompanied Lord Byron to the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. This short, stormy stay in the mansion led to a horror story writing competition in which famous tales such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were first produced.

Decadent, sinister, and macabre The Vampyre started the enduring fascination with bloodsucking monsters that produced stories such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This chilling tale is not to be missed by lovers of fantasy and horror fiction.

I basically read John William Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ because Lord Ruthven (the vampire of the title) is a major character in Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing books, which I adore. To be fair, the character would hate that anyone read this, but… sorry, got curious! Especially since Polidori certainly had an influence on later portrayals of vampires.

Often viewed as a diss of Byron, it’s definitely readable as such, and it’s definitely at least heavily linked with Byron, given Caroline Lamb’s previous use of the name for a thinly-disguised Byron. It’s pretty fun to read it as a diss, though poking around a bit there’s some criticism of that reading, which also seems reasonable (it would hardly be the declaration of independence from Byron that some people think it is if it’s also centering a triumphant Byron stand-in). There’s that whole vampire-typical loathing/fascination thing going on…
And hey, a rare seasonally appropriate read for me! Spoopy season, that is; I finished this in October.
Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Genius Myth

Posted November 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Genius Myth

The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers

by Helen Lewis

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 352
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Everything you think you know about genius is wrong.

Most discoveries don't come in a flash of inspiration. Most high achievers aren't obsessive loners with high IQs. Most 'geniuses' have collaborators and well-developed support networks. What is a genius? Very often, it's the person who takes the credit.

Helen Lewis takes aim at the myth of the solitary genius, exploring historical and contemporary examples to show how a set of stories influence our idea of the word.

This mythology would not matter so much if it didn't have a human cost. The Genius Myth lays bare the invisible support enjoyed by our most celebrated individuals: their collaborators, their teams, their wives and parents and family wealth and connection, all quietly tidied from the historical record.

By understanding the past and current models for genius, The Genius Myth works towards a possible future of a more egalitarian meritocracy.

The premise of Helen Lewis’ The Genius Myth is basically that when we moved from saying “this person has a genius for X” into “this person is a genius”, we created a mythology that serves us ill, with examples including Elon Musk and Roman Polanski. The genius label helps people get away with bad behaviour, encourages us to worship them, and causes people to think they’re going to be great at running a major social media network just because their company successfully delivered astronauts to the space station. You know, just as an example.

(As a note, Lewis gives Elon Musk more credit than I do, seeing him as very good in his field. I have questions about this, but that’s irrelevant to the main argument.)

I think Helen Lewis has a point, and this book is a good complement to Claire Dederer’s Monsters (which it mentions) because it deals with some of the same issues from a slightly different angle. It did feel like it dragged on a bit, though; I could’ve used a couple fewer case studies and some tighter prose.

Still, some interesting points, and also examples of how the genius myth covers even for people who aren’t as highly placed as Musk, using an example of a now-disgraced playwright who was also a paedophile.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Audition for the Fox

Posted November 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Audition for the Fox

Audition for the Fox

by Martin Cahill

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 128
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a loveable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must ally with her besieged people and learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox was a pretty random find, about which I knew very little other than that it was a novella that had just released. It turned out to be set in a fantasy world with many gods and many stories, and it felt very much like a single person’s story within a broader and richer world, which is something I always appreciate.

It’s a coming of age story for the main character, Nesi, who gets scent back in time by the fox god as part of her test for whether she can become an acolyte — and as with many coming of age stories, Nesi starts out a bit sheltered and spoiled, wanting to just call the Fox to help her and get out of the situation. Eventually she settles down and understands that she needs to work within the time period she’s been sent to and get the Fox’s work done, and she begins to understand what the trickster does exactly.

T’sidaan, the trickster, is one of the loveable trickster types: they’ll take a sibling down a peg when they need to, and sometimes the laugh’s on them. The conflict they bring Nesi to is darker than that, though, a fierce rivalry between T’sidaan and the wolf god — and Nesi comes to understand both why T’sidaan finds this particular conflict so important, and also why T’sidaan won’t descend to the wolf god’s level, always contending with him on their own terms. It’s a very effective illustration of being careful not to become the thing you’re fighting, and the scene where it’s all revealed is good.

I liked the world, and Nesi’s allies, and there’s a genuine wrenching when Nesi’s test is over and she returns to her own time, which I also liked. It’s not a bloodless story, even though T’sidaan and Nesi are acting as tricksters, destabilising through meddling rather than outright war: it has teeth.

So overall, really enjoyable, especially the sense that there are so many other stories, a whole world that’s been thought out (or could be thought out) in order to play in.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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WWW Wednesday

Posted November 12, 2025 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Cover of Eat Me by Bill SchuttWhat have you recently finished reading?

I skimmed and ditched Shahidha Bari’s Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes because it was pretentious as fuck, gender essentialist to the max, and misgendered a (fictional) trans girl constantly in a discussion about her clothing. So that was kind of a bust.

Before that I read Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism, by Bill Schutt, that occasionally veered into a bit of sensationalism (e.g. says the author tries out cannibalism in the blurb: he eats a piece of someone else’s placenta, to be clear) but had some interesting stuff and sent me on a deep dive into how prion diseases work that contradicted what I learned during my degrees (or rather, suggested that it’s more theoretical and less proven than I thought).

Cover of Strangers and Intimates by Tiffany JenkinsWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve been keeping my “currently reading” list surprisingly clear for a few weeks, but I started a few at once in the last few days searching for something that would properly grab my interest. I’m in the mood to steamroller through a book, but apparently it has to be the right book.

One of the books I started is Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Public Life, by Tiffany Jenkins. This is the one I’m probably closest to just sitting down and steamrollering through, to be honest, but it’s a little harder to just do that because it’s a several-hour read sort of book. I’m finding it very interesting so far.

I also started C.M. Waggoner’s The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, which is starting out very self-consciously small-town-mystery, and there’s obviously (very obviously) some kind of supernatural influence forcing events to mimic a cosy mystery with a Miss Marple-ish detective. I’m a little curious how it’s going to turn out, but I’d like it to start getting somewhere soon.

Aaand finally I started volume two of MXTX’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. I’m having a little bit of a rough time keeping track of names and clans, which isn’t helping my enthusiasm, even if I have tried-and-true methods of getting to grips with all that as I read. I’m reminding myself firmly that I couldn’t keep track of Mu Qing, Feng Xin, Nan Feng and Fu Yao at first, and it all fell into place easily enough. Still, might not be in quite the right mood for this, especially with that 184-page opening chapter (even if it is broken into parts).

Cover of The Beauty's Blade by Feng Ren Zuo ShiWhat will you be reading next?

Feng Ren Zuo Shu’s The Beauty’s Blade is out, and I need to read that post-haste to see if I want to get it for my sister for Christmas. (Uhhh, look away, if you’re reading this, Squirtle!)

Other than that, I’m still eyeing Kaite Welsh’s The Wages of Sin, especially since it’s on my Book Spin Bingo board, and also the idea of getting back to my reread of the Greta Helsing books so I can read the new one (meaning it’d be time for Grave Importance).

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