Posted May 7, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo
Received to review via Netgalley
Cleric Chih returns to the Singing Hills abbey for the first time in this novella series, and finds things have changed: Cleric Thien, a beloved mentor, has died, and they’re just in time to participate in his memorial, and Almost Brilliant’s chick is growing fast and eager to meet them. Plus, there’s a pair of mammoths at the gates of the abbey, and some kind of quarrel growing up.
Homecoming can be strange, and Chih finds some of that difficult: a childhood friend is grown and even acting as the leader of the abbey, and the younger ones look up to them as an elder now. Almost Brilliant isn’t ready to travel with them again, and the abbey is strangely quiet (with everyone absent to go and record some fascinating uncovered previously-drowned ruins)… They have to navigate that and settle back down for a while, and try to figure out how to manage the whole mammoth situation (inasfar as that’s something they even ought to be managing).
It’s a lot, but as with the other novellas in this series, I loved it. We see a little more of the world, of all the stories those at the abbey gather and curate, and a little more now of where Chih comes from and what has shaped them. Especially fascinating to me, we learn a little more of the neixin, and meet several of them.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Nghi Vo, SF/F
Posted May 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher
Received to review via Netgalley
T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge takes the story of Sleeping Beauty and bends it till it breaks, flipping things round to give us a different perspective. That massive thorny hedge makes a great defence — but what if it was keeping something in, rather than out? What if we really, really don’t want Sleeping Beauty to wake?
Toadling is a changeling, raised in Fairy and then sent back to her original parents to avert disaster. Fayette is wilful, powerful and destructive, and Toadling… well, she knows how to turn into a toad, and how to command water. She has minor magics, nothing like Fayette’s strength, but somehow she has to contain her and protect the world.
Into the familiar story comes a knight, as you’d expect — but he’s a pretty singular sort of knight, one rather more interested in books, and not entirely sure what to do with a sword. He’s drawn to Toadling and the way she’s trapped within the thorny hedge, and he’s determined to fix things. Somehow.
The friendship that grows up between Halim and Toadling is really sweet, and I love his gentleness and the warm humour around him. I raced through this and loved it; fans of Kingfisher’s work won’t be disappointed.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, T. Kingfisher
Posted May 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight
The study of things like psychic powers and premonitions is always fascinating. There’s a sense that so many of us want to believe in this sort of thing — the way the human brain insists that there must be a pattern behind circumstances. One can be fairly intellectually sure that there’s no such thing as precognition per se, and yet find it a little freaky that (say) a young girl would dream of her school being swallowed up by black stuff a couple of nights before she dies in the Aberfan disaster…
This book is all about digging into that, mostly through looking at the investigations and interests of John Barker, a British psychiatrist who tried to gather up premonitions and test them scientifically. He was sometimes a bit too credible, a bit too inclined to influence the data — but then, two of his clairvoyants (percipients, as he called them) predicted his death fairly accurately, and had a number of other surprisingly specific hits (such as predicting a train derailment).
The book mostly follows Barker, along with a few of his colleagues, trying to understand his attempts to study premonitions, and why he was so fascinated by the subject. Knight doesn’t attempt to come to any conclusions, just presents the facts as best as they can be known — though of course there’s always a chance someone massaged the facts to make a better story, whether it was Barker, one of his colleagues, or Knight himself.
There’s quite a bit of detail on the Aberfan disaster in the first 50 pages, by the way, which hit me where I live. If that disaster is particularly evocative for you, then read with care.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Sam Knight, science
Posted April 30, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Death on the Riviera, John Bude
Death on the Riviera isn’t one of the best of the British Library Crime Classics series, but it’s a solid one. Bude’s plots and writing tend to the workman-like, and his detective is mostly a blank with no real personality (though his subordinate had a bit more of a personality here, with his love affair with someone involved in the case).
All of which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this, because Bude’s books are absolutely archetypical for a certain period of crime fiction, and thus very relaxing. You know what to expect, and you get it — after a fair amount of puzzling things out, a few red herrings, and a dead end.
I have to admit, I missed a couple of the hints here, and had to flip back to see if I thought they were really telegraphed. Maybe not quite, there was one thing that isn’t really foreshadowed well (and I don’t think it would’ve given the game away to make it a little clearer), but it all comes together in the end.
If you’re looking for the best writing or the best plotting, this won’t be it! But it is solid for what it is, and exactly what I wanted (though E.C.R. Lorac delivers a similar experience with a better sense of place and character).
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Bude, mystery
Posted April 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Under the Smokestrewn Sky, A. Deborah Baker (Seanan McGuire)
Received to review via Netgalley
Under the Smokestrewn Sky continues and completes the story of Zib and Avery’s first travels through the Up-And-Under. I was pretty sceptical in beginning this journey, since it spun off Middlegame — a great book, don’t get me wrong, but not one I really wanted to see a sequel or spin-off for, somehow.
Still, the series is not very related to Middlegame‘s story, and is self-contained and quite different in tone. This final volume wraps things up, bringing Zib and Avery to their final destination. The language remains playful and reminiscent of Cat Valente’s voice in the Fairyland books, and mostly avoids being too much.
As for the story, well, there are certain things that I found really predictable and others that I hadn’t been expecting. The narration made light of the first part, pointing out that Niamh also saw it coming, so just played into the whole meta-textual bit there — but still, I was a little disappointed that it had been obvious to me for so long.
It’s a mostly satisfying end, though I have lot of questions about where the characters other than Zib and Avery go from there. I suppose there may be more, since the last pages mention that Zib and Avery do return to the Up-and-Under… and I shall read it eagerly if so.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Seanan McGuire, SF/F
Posted April 26, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, Lina Rather
Received to review via Netgalley
I really liked Lina Rather’s previous novellas, so I leapt on this one even without reading what it was about. It follows Sarah Davis, an apprentice midwife who is more than a little uncanny herself, in a year when uncanny children are being born all over London. By chance, she meets Sir Christopher Wren’s wife, who is pregnant, and becomes her midwife — and thus gets drawn more and more into the strangeness, tugged between Sir Christopher’s ambitions for her uncanny powers, and those of the midwives she works with.
It’s an interesting setup, and I liked that the motivations of everyone had some justification behind them. Everyone thinks they’re a hero and doing the right thing, in their own head, and I could see that these characters did too.
As a novella, it doesn’t get into an enormous amount of depth with most of the characters, but Sarah is pretty clear, and her fledgeling relationship with Margaret, and the liminal world of almost-respectable, almost-unrespectable that she inhabits and struggles with.
I love Sisters of the Vast Black more, but I’m glad I picked this up!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, horror, Lina Rather, SF/F
Posted April 23, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Thief in the Night, KJ Charles
I always enjoy KJ Charles’ less murdery books, and this novella’s a nice one. There’s not much of a supporting cast, just Miles and Toby, getting to know each other, getting past their hangups, and figuring out how to take a chance on each other. Toby’s a sweetie, and Miles is… somewhat incidentally grumpy — which is to say, not permanently grumpy by constitution, but in a terrible position and not sure how on earth to turn things around.
As always, I love Charles’ careful attention to issues of consent. It really doesn’t take much to show characters being aware of it and ensuring it, and it makes the situations so much more satisfying. You don’t end up thinking “ugh, but X was relying on Y for food to eat, so of course he couldn’t really say no” — because the characters realise that and work with it (or don’t, and later have to work with it, perhaps). It’s not some unspoken, unexamined grossness.
As a result, it’s easy to just enjoy Toby and Miles and how they find happiness together. I really liked Toby, and I really felt for the panic-stricken moments near the end… but of course, Miles comes to the rescue (I won’t spoil you as to how).
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, K.J. Charles, queer fic, romance
Posted April 21, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Twice Round the Clock, Billie Houston
Twice Round the Clock was pretty much what I expected of this series, which means it was pretty comforting. I knew nothing about the author, though she was somewhat famous in her time (for reasons other than being an author); I wonder how much that impacted the initial reception of the book.
As it goes, it’s a country house mystery with a somewhat closed circle of suspects (not a locked room mystery, and events make it clear that people can make it to the house, but most of the suspects are cooped up in the house due to an impressive thunderstorm). The victim is a rather awful man, and the author does well at making clear that he’s awful without ever doing anything that you can point to as being so very bad.
There’s quite a bit of melodrama, fainting ladies and spurious engagements and the like — not to mention poisons that can be smeared on a person or animal and kill them spontaneously at a pre-determined time later — but that’s pretty par for the course for a crime novel of the period, and enjoyable in its way.
One thing Houston did really well is the pacing: starting off with the discovery of the body, then winding the clock back to show us the preceding hours, and then ratcheting up the tension to the climax. With each chapter having a clock time, that does help to create the tension of the story.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Billie Houston, book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery
Posted April 19, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Sex: Lessons from History, Fern Riddell
A comprehensive history of sex would be a tall order: sexual behaviour doesn’t fossilise, after all, and it’s so often been a taboo subject that even in written history, it can be hard to find evidence. Riddell doesn’t try too hard to find evidence far back in the past, but works with what records we have, reminding us all of the lies we keep telling ourselves about the Victorians being total prudes about sex, about the historical treatment of queer people, etc. She dips into court records and ad copy, so it’s not just contemporary accounts that specifically aimed to discuss sex and attitudes toward it, but also additional evidence.
Riddell’s prose is really readable and full of anecdotes and illustrations from the records, which means it’s not dry at all. It does focus on sex and people who have sex, but touches on gender identity as well, with caution about applying modern labels and concepts to people who never wrote about what they felt or intended; asexuality is referenced, but not really discussed.
There’s quite a range of topics here (homosexuality, masturbation, orgasms, contraception), so it doesn’t go into too much depth on any one thing; rather, it’s a bit of an overview.
Referencing is fairly clear, using footnotes rather than end-notes (so more specific than many popular non-fic books), and there’s an index. There are a few editing issues that I really think should’ve been caught — typos and such.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Fern Riddell, history, non-fiction
Posted April 16, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Blurb Your Enthusiasm, Louise Willder
I didn’t find Blurb Your Enthusiasm hugely surprising or enlightening in the way it spoke about blurbs and the process of preparing books for publication. Back in high school, my favourite teacher told us to read everything and think about it in terms of the audience, the intent, what it was trying to do — and that’s always stuck with me. I don’t remember if he had us analysing blurbs, but we did look at various different kinds of copy, and as a result much of what Willder writes here sounds like common sense to me. It might be quite illuminating for others, but that’s hard to judge.
That said, I really enjoyed writing the book anyway. Writing something really short like a blurb requires crisp writing, with attention to sound and feel, and in the case of a blurb to very specific purposes as well; that practice has honed Willder’s own writing. She’s let herself get a little wordy here, but nonetheless, I could tell that she wrote attentively, choosing the right words.
The little mouse doodles are cute, too, and her writing is light and easy to read and sometimes funny — but mostly I was captured by the crisp feel of it, the way I wanted to hang on every word even when they weren’t at all surprising.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Louise Willder, non-fiction
