Category: General

Let’s Talk Bookish: Casting in Adaptations

Posted April 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 7 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads! Every Friday they have a different topic for participants to write about and discuss, e.g. like this post.

This week’s theme is about casting in (movie?) adaptations of books:

Casting in book-to-film adaptations is always a big topic, and recently, the Wuthering Heights movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi has been the source of a lot of controversy. Other 2026 high-profile adaptations include Project Hail Mary, out March 20th, and the new Hunger Games movie, set to release in the fall, both for which the casting has been received more positively. What is most important to you with casting for book-to-film adaptations? Is the perfect hair color, or right height or eyes always a must, or is personality more important? When are book-accurate looks in casting most important? What are your favorite—and least favorite—book-to-film adaptations when it comes to casting?

I must admit I don’t have a lot of skin in the game (again) because I don’t really watch movies very often — nor TV, to be fair. I have surprisingly seen Knives Out and Glass Onion, because I got curious enough about the classic mystery type setups they had going on, but otherwise I’m hard pressed to name anything particularly recent that I’ve seen. I still name Pacific Rim as a recent-ish movie I’ve seen and, uh, well…

It also doesn’t help that I don’t have a visual imagination at all: I’m completely aphantasic, right on the “5” end of the apple test scale, so I don’t really imagine characters in the way described. Instead I get more of a sense of them: you know how birdwatchers get the “jizz” of a bird? Something like that, I think.

I do love the old BBC adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, so let’s turn to those for an idea of what I think about casting. The main players here are Ian Carmichael (in the black-and-white era) and Edward Petherbridge (in 1987) — I don’t know of any other adaptations, and I don’t know if I want to, because between them Carmichael and Petherbridge set a pretty high bar. Neither of them is quite the right physical type, but they each manage to capture different aspects of Peter’s manner perfectly. I can see Peter right away when I look at Petherbridge, but for Carmichael it takes seeing him in motion and hearing his voice.

The same is pretty much true of the way they speak, to be fair, but reversed: Carmichael needs only speak and immediately he sounds like Peter, while for Petherbridge it’s more the combination… But really, both of them are wonderful Lord Peters, and I delight in their performances.

Ian Carmichael also voices Lord Peter in the BBC radio adaptations, and they’re really good. The BBC often hits it out of the park on radio adaptations, or they did a few decades ago: The Lord of the Rings had a glorious adaptation, and even Andy Serkis (who did a great job as Gollum) can’t quite dislodge my conviction that the radio adaptation’s Gollum is the Gollum. On the other hand, the radio adaptation voice of Aragorn strikes me as wrong every time, though I do get into it as the adaptation rolls along. When it comes to the movie, by contrast, Viggo Mortensen was instantly Aragorn to me: manner, voice, clothes, the way he held himself… Perfect.

(That said, I was disappointed by the movie version of Faramir and never really reconciled with that portrayal, particularly with the changes made to the character for the sake of screen adaptation. Something too “soft” about him, and no, I can’t explain that statement any further.)

There are also times when I’m very sceptical of casting, like casting David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale in the Good Omens series, but makeup, costuming and pure skill from the actors make it fit like they were perfect all along. I’ve heard the same about the adaptation of Martha Wells’ Murderbot, where Alexander Skarsgård has been able to win over people who were deeply sceptical; I’m definitely curious what I’ll think when I get round to it, if I ever do.

(NB: I’m aware of the allegations against Neil Gaiman. Good Omens was also Terry Pratchett’s — some say the majority of it was Terry Pratchett’s — and I think the TV show was also so much more than Gaiman, though I acknowledge his heavy involvement. I’m not sure if I’ll watch the remainder or rewatch the first two series, and at the moment I don’t expect to. All the same, David Tennant’s Crowley was perfect to me, and I don’t want Gaiman’s misdeeds to take that achievement away from Tennant. Still, I think making this acknowledgement is important.)

All in all, I think I can forgive a lot of infidelity to details like hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, etc, as long as the actors can capture something fundamental about the character. Some can do both, like Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn or Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher, while some can carry the day with voice and mannerisms like Ian Carmichael as Peter Wimsey.

Sorry, though, David Wenham. You just aren’t Faramir. I’m sure you’re perfectly nice, but you’re not Faramir.

Tags: books, discussion

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 8, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

This post is being scheduled instead of published immediately, as an experiment! A while ago, Jetpack stopped sending emails when I scheduled posts, despite working fine when I manually published them. Let’s find out if that’s still the case or if they’ve fixed their bug…

What have you recently finished reading?

Kimberly Campanello’s An Interesting Detail, a collection of prose-poems which drove me up the wall. Each one is a handful of scattered imagery linked by non-sequiturs, and I hated finding it perfectly readable and at the same time totally incomprehensible.

Before that, it was Nicola Whyte’s Murder Like Clockwork, which I found serviceable but not compelling. My review is already up here.

What are you currently reading?

I just started qntm’s There is No Antimemetics Division, which I requested from the library more or less on a whim and started today on even more of a whim. I find the idea mindboggling and possibly like it’s going to trigger existential dread, and I’m very curious how it plays out.

I have quite a lot of other books on the go, but the other thing I’m most actively reading is Stephanie Boonstra and Campbell Price’s Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries, which I got at the Petrie Museum and is scratching my itch for histories that are X in Y objects.

I also very recently started Gareth Russell’s Queen James, but I’m not far into it.

What will you be reading next?

Nobody knows, particularly not me. I have a bunch of books on the go already, so I’ll probably focus on some of that, like reading more of Queen James. My DoubleSpin choice for the Litsy BookSpin challenge is S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, though, so perhaps that?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Recent Five-Star Reads

Posted April 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post is about places on your bucket list, but since I don’t have a bucket list and I read books heavy on the fantasy or that skip around the world a bunch… I thought I’d go rogue. I don’t rate a lot of books five-stars (“loved it”, in the scale I use) — but the books that make the cut deserve to be talked about more, I’d say!

So let’s dig in! Some of these don’t have reviews up yet, but those that do, I’ll link my review. I’ll go backwards through time, starting with the most recent. 2026 has started out pretty well, with five out of the ninety-seven books I’ve read this year so far gaining five whole stars!

Ramesses the Great, by Toby Wilkinson. (Finished 30th March 2026.)
I tore through this one! It helps that Ramesses is a very compelling figure, but Wilkinson presents his evidence well and without speculating too much on stuff we can’t really know for sure about Ramesses II’s inner thoughts, he gives us a good idea of the man all the same. Not always likeable, inasfar as we can make that judgement from this distance of time and from a different culture, but certainly fascinating.
Blue Horses and Felicity, by Mary Oliver. (Finished 26th March 2026.)
It’s cheating a little to bundle these together, but I did read them at the same time! These two poetry collections are both lovely: I find Oliver’s poetry really accessible to read, without being too simplistic.
The Library of Ancient Wisdom, by Selena Wisnom. (Finished 28th February 2026.)
I liked this one a lot: I’ve read a couple of other books on ancient Mesopotamia, but don’t feel like I have the same grasp of it as I do ancient Egypt. This gave me some of that, through focus on the library of Ashurbanipal. It’s necessarily limited and doesn’t really touch on the lives of common people, but it was still pretty interesting.
A History of England in 25 Poems, by Catherine Clarke. (Finished 9th February 2026.)
I thought this one was great: the choice of poems sometimes surprised me, but was always illuminating, and Clarke has a pretty good grasp of the problems between England and the other countries it shares an island with. There were things I’d have liked to see more of, but I was still really happy with this one.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail — The Art of Succession -Relics of Heritage-. (Finished 25th December 2025.)
I suppose I could skip this one as it sort of feels like it doesn’t count as a book read, but on the other hand I find the game’s artbooks really interesting, because they give you a glimpse at the original designs of familiar bosses, characters and in-world assets. It might be a quick read (since it’s almost all images), but a picture’s worth a thousand words and all that.
Strangers and Intimates, by Tiffany Jenkins. (Finished 13th November 2025.)
This one actually stuck with me less than I’d expected given the high rating, but it did raise interesting questions for me about why the value people place on privacy changes, and the differences between generations. There were some fascinating reflections on the scandal with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and how that has changed politics.
You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian. (Finished 28th September 2025.)
This is a lovely romance, with some grumpy/sunshine dynamics, but it’s more than just a list of tropes. There’s a lot of healing from grief, and a lot of hope (even in times that weren’t so great for queer people). Also, there’s a dog!
Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo. (Finished 2nd and 5th June 2025.)
These were rereads, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they got such a high rating! They’re the first two books in the Singing Hills series, at least in publication order — I do think they’re also a good place to start in getting to learn about where Chih is from and what they do, and they have my favourite formats for the series too, being focused mostly on stories told to Chih. Some of the later books are more about Chih themself, which is also fun, but I like these best.
Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher. (Finished 25th May 2025.)
2025 and 2026 have been the years of T. Kingfisher for me, it seems. This one just grabbed me at the right time, I think, and I thought the ideas and the way of retelling the Snow White and Rose Red story were just so fun. Also the mirror monsters were a work of horrible genius.
Cold Night Lullaby, by Colin Mackay. (Finished 22nd May 2025.)
This was another reread. I’m not sure I ever expected to reread this one, because Mackay went through horrors and he certainly paints them vividly in his poetry, but… something made me feel like it was the right time to read it. It’s a poetic working-through of the things he witnessed in Bosnia when he went there as an aid worker — including the mutilation and murder of the woman he loved.

Sorry for going off-piste, but I look forward to seeing everyone else’s TTT posts this week! Maybe you’ll inspire me to create a bucket list.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Definitions

Posted April 6, 2026 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

Aaand somehow it’s Monday again already, meaning Fantasy With Friends discussion time (prompts hosted at Pages Unbound). This week’s theme is about the definition of the genre:

How do you define “fantasy” as a genre?

The simplest answer I can think of is “a story that somehow pushes outside of our reality, in a way not intended to be explained by science” (which would put it more in the realm of science fiction). I think the conventional definition is usually that fantasy includes magic or supernatural elements, but I think that excludes some stories set in an alternative world that may not have magic, but definitely aren’t our world and read to me as fantasy (like Freya Marske’s Swordcrossed).

I was actually for a long time a member of an online book group called The Alternative Worlds: our interests were mostly sci-fi and fantasy, but alternate history (like Jo Walton’s Farthing) also fell into that, and I think that widened my definitions and shaped what I wanted from genre fiction a lot: alternative worlds, alternative ways of being, alternative ways things might have happened. For quite a while, I found the term “speculative fiction” more descriptive of what I’m interested in.

There are a lot of different subgenres of fantasy where different elements are more or less important, but for me being set in a world that doesn’t work quite like our own is what does it (though I wouldn’t argue that Farthing is fantasy in the traditional sense). That might mean adding magic to our world in hidden corners (like Caitlin Rozakis’ The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association), by adding it into our world where it didn’t exist before (like Chugong’s Solo Leveling or singNsong’s Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint), or by creating whole new worlds with different histories and belief systems (like Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor or Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor).

Inevitably the definition isn’t perfect and can get a bit porous: is horror fantasy? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Buuut I think that’s a feature, not a bug: we needn’t get too rigid in our definitions, less we miss out on stuff that’s new and fun, or stuff that we’d love that’s just outside our clearly defined box. Humans like to define things very narrowly and it’s pretty much always more complicated than that, and things might be better if we could be better (as individuals and as a society) at noticing that putting things into clearly defined and separated boxes is only useful up to a point.

Tags: books, discussions, Fantasy With Friends

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 4, 2026 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

Wooo, it’s the weekend. It’s been a long week, but I think I’m starting to be caught up with everything. Let’s talk books!

Books acquired this week

Technically this is actually part #2 of my London book haul (part one covers my purchases from museum bookshops and indies). This time we’re going through my haul from Waterstones Piccadilly, which was actually the last destination after the Forbidden Planet Megastore. The SF/F floor was closed, so I spent all the time on the non-fiction floor… which probably saved my wallet somewhat, it must be admitted.

First, let’s have some science!

I did see a potentially interesting book about infectious diseases, but I’ve got so picky about that topic now — I no longer find it as soothing to read, at least for now. So I gave that a miss.

Next up, let’s have the Egyptology books I found, a significant subset of what I got. I’d probably have got them even if I hadn’t gone to the Petrie museum recently, as I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egypt, but it had certainly put me in the mood for them.

I already tore through Ramesses the Great and loved it, but I’m looking forward to the others, too! I imagine there won’t be as much new to me in Egypt’s Golden Couple, because I’ve always been fascinated by the Amarna period, but I don’t mind the refresher.

Finally, a more miscellaneous bunch:

I’d seen Threads of Empire on someone else’s post a couple of weeks ago and added it to my wishlist, so I was pleased to spot it in person, and I’d heard about Queen James somewhere or other, probably from KJ Charles. The title made a couple of people to whom I mentioned it wince, so I’d note that it’s presumably based on the contemporary saying Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Iacobus (“Elizabeth was king, now James is queen”), and it does seem to be a serious examination of James’ relationships with men. If it turns out weird and homophobic/biphobic, I promise there will be a scathing review, but I’m pretty sure KJ Charles would’ve said something already if so.

As for A Woman’s Work, I remembered liking Cleghorn’s Unwell Women… while Rummage was a completely random choice just out of interest.

Almost-finally, I have a manga I got this week on a whim, and the single manhwa I got in Forbidden Planet, since it seems appropriate to put them in the same post:

I was not a huge fan of Cat + Crazy, sadly; I tried it because I liked Cat + Gamer, but I think it’s too goofy and “out there”. I’m excited for volume 9 of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, though!

And finally-finally, here’s my library hold of the week, which came in way sooner than I’d been expecting:

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give this a try, but the sheer market saturation of it has finally needled me into giving it a shot. Thank goodness for libraries, which let us take a chance on things sometimes.

Posts from this week

Let’s start with the reviews, as ever:

Non-fiction: A History of England in 25 Poems, by Catherine Clarke (5/5 stars, “loved it”)
Horror graphic novel: Home Sick Pilots: Teenage Haunts, by Dan Watters et al (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy novella: A Long and Speaking Silence, by Nghi Vo (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Travel and folklore: Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination, by Nicholas Jubber (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Poetry: Southernmost: Sonnets, by Leo Boix (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Horror manga: Sailor Zombie, by Jiji, Pinch and Isshin Inudo (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)

As ever, most of those aren’t recent reads, I just have a huge review backlog written but not yet posted, in my efforts to post a mixed selection of reviews.

And the other posts:

I’m steadily getting to the point of doing a bunch of non-review features again after a long drought where I really just posted STS posts and reviews, which is nice. Actually having people visit my blog and having people whose blogs I read, and having time for all that… magical!

What I’m reading

I’m not sure how much I’ve actually read this week, because it’s felt like I’ve been too busy. Let’s have a look — here are some previews of covers of the books I finished this week which I will review on here soon(ish):

Not bad, really!

As for this weekend, I hope to finish Amal El-Mohtar’s Seasons of Glass and Iron, for a start, and maybe start my BookSpin book for the month, which is actually Gareth Russell’s Queen James (featured above). Or maybe I’ll go with some of the fiction I’ve just barely got started, like Stephanie Burgis’ Wooing the Witch Queen.

Whatever I read, I’m hoping to do more of it this weekend, and charge up my batteries for the week ahead.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Let’s Talk Bookish: Novels in Verse

Posted April 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

I thought I’d try out doing some more discussion posts and getting more content than just reviews, after the slow years while I was studying (I can’t believe it’s already been like nine months since I finished my course, and my brain’s still recovering). So let’s give this one a shot, and today’s theme iiiis Novels in Verse:

Have you read any novels in verse? Do you think novels in verse can be more emotionally powerful compared to regular prose, or do you think novels in verse are more difficult to connect with? What kind of stories do you think work best in verse (i.e. coming-of-age, grief, romance, historical fiction, etc.)? What are your favourite novels in verse?

So let’s take that a bit at a time!

Have you read any novels in verse?

Yes, a couple. Not a lot, but I’ve read Dove Cooper’s Seafoam and Silence, and I know there’s some other verse novel that I’m forgetting… It’s been quite a while since I came across one that called to me, though, so I haven’t got any recent examples.

Do you think novels in verse can be more emotionally powerful compared to regular prose, or do you think novels in verse are more difficult to connect with?

Neither, really! I think both prose and poetry have their place, depending on the author and the story’s needs, and the reader’s inclinations. Poetry is great at really condensing stuff into a tight package, and that can sometimes be devastating, and sometimes it just won’t land, and that quite likely depends on the tastes of the reader.

I’d probably find I connect better with prose, personally; I like the space it can give an author to give me detail and time with characters, and find that verse often makes things tighter and sparser. Prose is like a broadsword and verse is a little rapier that goes in deep: both of them can be deadly, but I find the broadsword a tad more painful and there’s a fair bit more tissue damage. Sometimes there are moments when the rapier thrust straight to the heart is enough, though.

This analogy isn’t perfect, but I think you probably get where I’m going.

What kind of stories do you think work best in verse?

I suspect that anything could, in the right hands!

What are your favourite novels in verse?

I can’t really pick a favourite, since I remember so few! There’s one where the title’s just on the tip of my tongue that I wouldn’t mind revisiting my review of to see how much I liked it… but since I can only remember the vaguest details, I’m having trouble thinking of it, ahaha. I’ll be curious to see other people’s recommendations!

Tags: discussions, Let's Talk Bookish

March Reading Wrap-Up

Posted April 2, 2026 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

It’s the end of March already? That snuck up on me!

March in general:

March was a bit busier than I’d hoped, with some minor dental work ending up causing quite a bit of pain. It’s still not sorted, so there are more appointments in my future, annoyingly enough. It really impinged on my urge to read, so I’m getting a bit behind on my reading goals…

But I did also have the first of two graduation ceremonies! This one was from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, while the one in April is from the partner university, University of London. I was presented my award by the programme director of my course, who knew who I was even though I was always a distance learner, so that was preeeetty cool. My wife and I stayed in London for the week, so I also went to museums, the zoo, and a bunch of bookshops — a very satisfying trip.

I’ve done a fair bit of gaming against this month, with a particular shoutout to a chill and beautiful puzzle game that’s been eating my brain, The Artisan of Glimmith. I also had a great time with Sticky Business (you design your own stickers and sell them, unlocking little customer stories through the types of sticker you make!) and A Little to the Left (a tidying/puzzle game).

But now it’s time for the books!

Reading stats:

Total books read: 25
Total pages read: 6,873
Rereads: 2
ARCs: 2
Series finished/up to date: 3
Books owned pre-2026: 2
Books owned from 2026: 17
Borrowed books: 2

Fiction: 13
Non-fiction: 7
Poetry: 5
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 5

As you see, a quieter month by my standards is still quite a bit of reading! Somehow I had quite a bit of trouble settling down to read while in London, and before that my teeth got in the way, but some short books and some exciting new finds perked me up.

I was surprised by the proportion of non-fiction this month, but I do always lean into non-fiction when I’m stressed.

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books read: 93/400 (7 books behind)
Overall total pages read: 22,962/100,000 (2,243 pages behind)
Books read from backlog: 23/100
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 20/20

Definitely slipping a bit on the yearly goals, but a good month will quickly put that right! It’s amazing that I stayed under the 20 limit for books owned and not started, but it did involve a marathon day of starting books, ahaha. I’ve got a few more on the go than I typically like these days, but it is also a bit of a nice nostalgic feeling, since I used to read like that before I found bookish social media and started focusing on finishing books. It’s not a bad thing to have that feeling again.

Blogging stats:

Views: 10.3k
Visitors: 9.2k
Likes: 317
Comments: 346
Reviews: 30
Other posts: 20

The stats are a bit down from last month, but that’s not too surprising since I didn’t have as much time to visit and chat this month.

Most viewed posts:

Review – Platform Decay (128 views)
Review – Strange Buildings (89 views)
Review – Heaven Official’s Blessing vol 3 (75 views)
Review – The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter (manga), vol 2 (62 views)
Review – The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel), vol 1 (55 views)

High views continue for The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter and Heaven Official’s Blessing reviews, but this month my review of new release Strange Buildings and advance review of the new Murderbot topped the list. Not too surprising!

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

From Keira’s Bookmark: [Review] The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward, by Keira
From Strange Horizons: Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum, by Jenny Hamilton
From There’s Always Room for One More…: Top Ten Tuesday: fantastical pasts, by imyril
From The London Review of Books: A Way to Be A Person, by Paul Taylor
From The Bibliosanctum: Book Review: Dollface by Lindy Ryan, by Mogsy
From Reactor: How to Read Sixteen Books At Once (At All Times), by Jo Walton

And th-th-that’s all folks! Onward into April, and here’s hoping for a lot of fun reading time for all of us, but especially for me. 😉

Tags: books, monthly wrapup

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Toby Wilkinson’s Ramesses the Great, which was great fun. I found one of his previous books a bit dry/boring, but this one worked well for me. I’d have expected myself to know a bit more about Ramesses II, but I’ve mostly read fairly general histories of Egypt rather than focused ones, so he’s an important part of those, but they didn’t go into this kind of detail.

What are you currently reading?

Riley Black’s The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs, first and foremost! I’ve enjoyed her previous books, and though I read a lot about dinosaurs, things are ever-changing as we learn more. True to expectations, there are some things that are new to me, so that’s been fun.

Also combining this book and Wilkinson’s, I ended up dreaming about a velociraptor called Ramesses II, wearing the twin crown of Egypt…

What will you read next?

I’ll probably work on finishing up Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature, since it’s probably a relatively quick read and it’d be good to finish some of the (many) books I have started. I’m also keen to get back to Amal El-Mohtar’s Seasons of Glass and Iron.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Surefire Tropes

Posted March 31, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

Today’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday iiiis “buzzwords or phrases that would make you read (or avoid) a book”. I immediately thought about tropes, especially since a lot of people seem to use trope style stuff for marketing, soooooo… let’s hit TV tropes and look for my catnip.

I’ve done that partly by looking at novels I already love, lest I end up with more on my TBR.

Intimate Hair Brushing. Just… just hear me out here. I am a complete sucker for non-sexual intimacy in general, and I think it’s often underused but a great way of showing genuine closeness between two characters. This one shows up in The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, in one of the extras: post-canon, Shen Qingqiu is trying to soothe Luo Binghe when he thinks he’s angry and upset, and one of the things he does (after cuddling to sleep) is brush his hair. It’s actually a version of Luo Binghe from another world, who actually starts considering trying to get Shen Qingqiu to come away with him afterwards… but the point is that it’s a sign of how intimate Shen Qingqiu has become with his former disciple, and a solid sign of the change from the master/disciple relationship into something romantic. It also shows up in Heaven Official’s Blessing, though it’s also a way there for Xie Lian to check whether Hua Cheng is a ghost/his power level as a ghost (as low-level ghosts can’t form details like hair and fingerprints).
Red String of Fate. This refers to the idea of people who are fated to be bound together, visualised as a red string. Mostly I love this when it’s played with a bit: fate in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but avoiding fate or forging your own fate… yep, catnip. In Heaven Official’s Blessing, there’s is an actual magic string that Hua Cheng gives to Xie Lian so they won’t be separated — and it works as a symbol of their bond, because Hua Cheng has repeatedly chosen to bind his fate to that of Xie Lian. It’s also played with in Tied to You: Jigeon is in love with Wooseo even before it’s revealed they’re joined together by what’s basically a red string of fate, but there’s no guarantee they’ll end up together, because bonds can be broken. Jigeon acts deeply manipulatively to try to ensure he gets Wooseo in the end… but ultimately he has to reveal what he’s been doing to Wooseo and be accepted by him in spite of it, or their bond will never be complete.
What You Are In the Dark. I found this on the page about Gawain, and yeees. The moments where a character will not be witnessed by anyone else, no one will ever know, and they will choose good over what’s convenient. Think Frodo refusing to kill Gollum, for example.
Addictive Magic. Or really many kinds of magic system that make magic complicated and have a cost; I ran across this one on the page for The Lord of the Rings, but I’m sure I’ve run into it elsewhere too!
Genre Savvy. I love a bit of meta, where a character seems to be aware of the genre they’re in… or misread the genre. We’re back on Scum Villain here, where Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s still in a harem novel, but Luo Binghe has fallen in love with him, changing the genre. It’s also played straight in a lot of ways, because Luo Binghe is “The Protagonist” and has plot armour that protects him from stuff going wrong, because he has to be supreme within his own story. Shen Qingqiu even uses that to get out of trouble, knowing that the story won’t allow any harm to come to Luo Binghe, and banking on it to save them both at one point by persuading someone to attack Luo Binghe (they get knocked out by a random falling beam!).
Rivalry as Courtship. The very first example of this I can think of in my life was Anne and Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables (and the later books, which develop it a lot more). All those charged feelings make things more explosive and give a real sense of chemistry. That said, I usually dislike it when it’s more enemies than rivals, if there are atrocities involved or something like that — it’s weird when people try to sweep that under the rug. In that case you also need a hefty dollop of atonement in order to get the whole thing to work.
Aw Look! They Really Do Love Each Other! This one came up on The Goblin Emperor’s page, and yeeees. The example given is when Maia’s guard Beshelar, who has been quite aloof and disapproving, gets angry on his behalf when he learns that Setheris abused him. I love that moment, because it shows how much he really cares!
Badass Bureaucrat. The example given is Cliopher Mdang in The Hands of the Emperor, and yes, absolutely! Also Csevet in The Goblin Emperor, in slightly different ways.
Family of Choice. Also known as the found family trope, or at least, I think these are pretty much the same. For people to choose each other… yep! Thank you, that’s lovely, let’s have some more! Think of the crew of Wayfarer in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, for instance.
Hidden Badass. They don’t look like a badass, they don’t seem like they can kick your ass, but oh boy howdy you’d better not cross them. Happens quite a lot in danmei, since characters don’t need to be physically ripped to be extremely strong.

This has taken me long enough, so I’m gonna hit post with just these — even though there are probably plenty of other tropes contending for my top ten!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Underrated Fantasy Books

Posted March 30, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Aaand somehow it’s Monday again already, meaning Fantasy With Friends discussion time (prompts hosted at Pages Unbound). This week’s theme is about underrated fantasy books:

What is an underrated fantasy book you would recommend?

Which is a very tricky one, so I’m going to narrow it down and give you some recommendations for books in a fantasy niche: Arthurian retellings! These are all books/series I wrote about in my MA dissertation (oh so many moons ago) on the portrayal of Sir Kay and how it was influenced by the original Welsh Cai. I’ll admit I had an absolute ball doing this “research” and reading some obscure books… though I’ll also admit that there are still some Arthurian retellings lurking on my shelves unread that I acquired but didn’t read in time, and still haven’t got round to now the frenzied moment has passed, even though it’s been a decade and change. (Sorry, Parke Godwin! I hear good things!)

First up, one of the series that actually reignited my interest in Arthurian stories, and led to my focus on Gawain and thus, indirectly, to my interest in Kay — Sarah Zettel’s Paths to Camelot books. They have different titles in different countries, and even one protagonist (who has a Welsh name) is renamed for the American edition. Pretty gross, and changing “Rhian” to “Risa” is just bizarre, but at least she’s fictional!

The first book is Camelot’s Shadow, or in the US, In Camelot’s Shadow, and it’s ultimately a retelling of ‘Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle’ and ‘The Marriage of Sir Gawain’, and is probably my favourite. I must admit that I don’t know if I’d rate these books so highly absent nostalgia, but I did find a lot to say about the ways they play with the Arthurian legends. They fixed certain things I hated, looked on certain characters with a more sympathetic (or less sympathetic) eye, and I remember them with great fondness. NB: I’d say they are romances first and foremost, but also definitely fantasy, so there is magic as well as swordplay and eventual kissing.

Next up, Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot, which is so close to Arthur/Kay (and, to be fair, Gawain/Kay) romance that it prompted my dissertation supervisor to check with me that it wasn’t, indeed, going to go there. Nope, it doesn’t, it’s just so heavy with subtext that it practically drips with it, and pretty much the highlight of the book for Kay is being held in Arthur’s arms at the end. I’m not even joking. Regardless, it also does interesting stuff with interpreting the post-Welsh portrayals of Kay and presenting him sympathetically, and I had an absolute whale of a time with it, especially the time that I live-tweeted reading it with quotations.

Finally, and probably the best written of the bunch, I present to you Phyllis Ann Karr’s Idylls of the Queen. It’s a version of the Arthurian legends sympathetic to both Kay and Guinevere, and I’ve been meaning to reread it for a while now. I remember it as being a bit funny, a bit sharp, which is very Kay.

And just to be clear, none of these recommendations are for perfect books, and there’s a certain amount of nostalgia tinting my glasses rose pink as I write. These are just retellings I had fun with, which did interesting things with the stories, and sometimes showed me a new side to characters I hadn’t been interested in before… and which not a lot of people I know have read. If you try one of ’em despite my disclaimers and don’t like it, don’t blame me!

Tags: Arthurian, books, discussions, Fantasy With Friends