Category: Reviews

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 10

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

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 10

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 161
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #10
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

"What can I do to move towards a future with you?"

As spring rolls around, Nobuko and Hiroki celebrate their birthdays together. Their third year of college brings with it a number of changes, causing plenty of anxiety for Nobuko -- until Hiroki makes a suggestion... The two of them begin fumbling towards a future after graduation, even as they grapple with their more affectionate impulses.

Volume ten of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story is all about Hiroki and Nobuko navigating their relationship as it becomes both more settled and a bit more difficult — when they’re rushed off their feet, studying hard, and not able to see each other so often, so there’s a risk of distance and growing apart.

I really love that they repeatedly communicate their way through problems and make promises to each other about it. It’s cute, and also a great model for how you can work through a relationship if you’re brave enough to talk — even when that’s difficult, as it is for Nobuko.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Endangered Languages

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

Review – Endangered Languages

Endangered Languages

by Evangelia Adamou

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 264
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times.

58% of the world’s languages—or, approximately 4,000 languages—are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In Endangered Languages, Evangelia Adamou, a specialist of endangered languages and a learner of her own community language, Nashta, offers a sobering look at language endangerment and what is truly lost when a language disappears from usage.

Combining recent advances from the Western scientific tradition—from the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language attrition, population genetics, and natural language processing—and insights from Indigenous epistemology, theory, and ethics, Adamou examines a wealth of issues surrounding endangered languages. She discusses where endangered languages are found, including how they are faring in a digital world, why these languages are no longer used, and how communities can reclaim languages and keep them strong. Adamou also explains the impact of language continuity on community and individual health and well-being, the importance of language transmission in cultural transmission, and why language rights are essentially human rights.

Drawing on varied examples from the Wampanoag Nation to Wales, Endangered Languages offers a powerful reminder of the crucial role every language has in the vitality and well-being of individuals, communities, and our world.

Endangered Languages, by Evangelia Adamou, is part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, so it’s essentially an introduction, a bit of a primer on what it means for a language to be endangered, what we might do about it, etc. As a Welsh person (who doesn’t speak Welsh), obviously I have a bit of a vested interest here: Welsh is the least endangered of the Celtic languages, but it isn’t for lack of trying on the part of our English rulers (see also: the Welsh Not, Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, etc).

Welsh is a bit too successful for Adamou to spend much time on here, despite all that, though I think the revival efforts probably deserved a bit of a mention alongside the revival efforts for Breton, Cornish and Irish, including stuff like the Welsh Language Acts. To compare how Welsh is doing compared to other more endangered languages is pretty instructive — but there’s a limited amount of space in any one book, of course.

In the end, discussing endangered languages and how to protect them is surprisingly similar to discussing conservation, though of course it’s best not to stretch the similarity too far. I was interested to read about the fact that languages should be considered “dormant” rather than “extinct” now: I don’t know if I think that’s a nice way to look at it, or perhaps one which softens the tragedy of losing all native speakers of a language a little too much.

Anyway, an interesting introduction.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Now Go

Posted April 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Now Go

Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli

by Karl Thomas Smith

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 90
Series: Inklings
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Grief is all around us. At the heart of the brightly coloured, vividly characterised, joyful films of Studio Ghibli, they are wracked with loss - of innocence, of love, of the connection to our world and of that world itself. Now Go enters these emotional waters to interrogate not only how Studio Ghibli navigates grief so well, but how that informs our own understanding of grief's manifold faces.

Now Go is basically an essay about Studio Ghibli’s portrayal of grief and what that means to the author. It isn’t really just about grief in Studio Ghibli movies, and sometimes the link feels a bit tenuous. I can understand feeling a very strong personal connection to movies, and seeing things in them which reflect on one’s own grief and loss, but it ends up not being an inquiry into grief in Studio Ghibli, but very much the author’s grief and Studio Ghibli. The actual analysis of the movies as texts is fairly surface-level. In retrospect, maybe the title should’ve told me that was where it was going to tilt.

I also wasn’t super convinced that the author understood that, for example, Howl’s Moving Castle is based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones, and not something that Miyazaki came up with in his own head alone. He didn’t engage at all with the anti-war themes of this adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, which are very much Miyazaki’s thing, developed out of very small elements of the plot of the novel. It would have fit nicely with his themes, but… nope.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – The Sirens Sang of Murder

Posted April 10, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Sirens Sang of Murder

The Sirens Sang of Murder

by Sarah Caudwell

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 256
Series: Hilary Tamar #3
Synopsis:

Whilst on a trip to the sunny Channel Islands to find the heir to a lucrative tax law case, young barrister Michael Cantrip finds himself in over his head. Peculiar things begin to occur on the mysterious and isolated islands with something - or somebody -- bumping off members of his legal team.

With the help of his mentor, amateur investigator Hilary Tamar, Cantrip, must find a safe passage back to the Lincoln's Inn Chambers.

The Sirens Sang of Murder is the third Hilary Tamar book by Sarah Caudwell, and I was just as enchanted by it. This time it’s Cantrip getting into some real scrapes (could it ever be Ragwort’s turn, or is he too perfect?) and everyone else getting him out, with some serious risk to general life and limb along the way. There’s plentiful helpings of Julia as well, don’t worry.

It’s very British, pretty funny, and happy enough with its own cleverness that it doesn’t feel the need to stick it down your throat, or so it feels to me. If a particular apt phrase or funny moment passes me by, that somehow seems perfectly fine with Caudwell, and no need to labour it too much.

As for the mystery itself, that’s a little convoluted — and dramatic! — but that suits these books perfectly well. And when I say convoluted, I certainly don’t mean on the contrived scale of John Dickson Carr’s work, anyway.

I can see myself reading these books again and again; the cast is delightful, the wit works well for me (maybe there’s a shade of being an air to Sayers’ wittiest moments?) and I bet they could be a real delight in audio, a thought which strikes me enough that I’m going to see if there’s an audio version available.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

Posted April 9, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

A Pirate's Life for Tea

by Rebecca Thorne

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Series: Tomes and Tea #2
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

While searching for stolen dragon eggs, newly engaged couple Kianthe and Reyna find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a swashbuckling love story.

On one side is Serina, a failed farmer turned river pirate. Her booty? Wheat, grains, and the occasional jar of imported tea leaves. It's quite the embarrassment to Diarn Arlon, the powerful lord of the Nacean River, and he'll conscript anyone to bring her to justice. Especially Kianthe, the elemental mage who just crashed his party, and her somewhat-scary fiancée.

Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of Arlon's constables--who happens to be Serina's childhood friend. Bobbie is determined to capture the pirate before anyone else, but it would be a lot easier if Serina didn't absolutely loathe her now.

As Kianthe and Reyna watch this relation-shipwreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that these disaster lesbians need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna's favorite past time. The dragon eggs may have to wait.

A Pirate’s Life for Tea is the second in Rebecca Thorne’s series about Reyna and Kianthe, and… it might be the last one I read. I get how the adventure and romance of it will interest people, but something just isn’t clicking for me — it feels so terribly young, and I’m not saying that because I think it’s aimed at being cosy, but because the interactions between the characters don’t feel particularly grown up (even as they’re having sex).

The fantasy world it’s set in also fails to feel quite fleshed out: it felt a bit like in a video game, where as you progress, bits of the map get revealed — only I’m not sure the map’s there to be revealed until Kianthe and Reyna go there. (I don’t just mean the actual literal map, either, I mean the cultures and broad strokes of what’s out there for them to find.)

Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s all planned already, but I just didn’t feel it in reading the book.

Anyway, I can see how it would be a lot of fun for others, but it’s not my cup of tea (I don’t even like tea, so that’s not too surprising). I might read more in the future, maybe if I need something easy and morally simple to read, but not when I have so much else on my TBR that sounds tempting.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 5

Posted April 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 5

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

by Misaki, Momochi, Sando

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 210
Series: A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When Lizel mysteriously finds himself in a city that bears odd similarities to his own but clearly isn't, he quickly comes to terms with the unlikely truth: this is an entirely different world. Even so, laid-back Lizel isn't the type to panic. He immediately sets out to learn more about this strange place, and to help him do so, hires a seasoned adventurer named Gil as his tour guide and protector.

Until he's able to find a way home, Lizel figures this is a perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life adventuring as part of a guild. After all, he's sure he'll go home eventually... might as well enjoy the otherworldly vacation for now!

Volume five of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation features Eleven properly joining the party, wooo! We also see a bit more of Viscount Ray — and watch Lizel shamelessly manipulating matters to get what he wants.

I’m still deeply amused by people insisting this series isn’t a romance, because it really comes across like protesting too much when you have Eleven leaning across to cup and gently stroke Lizel’s cheek while asking to stay at his side. Like sure, this isn’t a kissing book, but Gil and Eleven (and plenty of others) are deeply drawn to Lizel, and it ends up coming across as preeeetty weird to keep insisting “no homo”.

I mean, maybe lots of people platonically gently stroke non-family members’ hair/cheeks and beg to stay at their side, but it’s pretty romance-coded, let’s be honest about this now.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , , ,

Divider

Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Posted April 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea

by Ian Dunt, Dorian Lynskey

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Origin Stories #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes people believe in conspiracy theories? Why have they taken over our political sphere? And how do we counter them before it’s too late?

The world has always had conspiracy theories. From the Illuminati to the deep state, the JFK assassination to the death of Princess Diana – there have always been those who believe that events are manipulated by shadowy forces with sinister intent. But in recent years, conspiracism has colonised the mainstream. These days, it is a booming industry, a political strategy and a pseudo-religion – and it’s threatening the foundations of liberal democracy.

Where once political battles were fought over ideas and values, it now feels as though we’re arguing over the nature of reality itself. The problem is bigger than lizard people or UFOs: left unchecked, conspiracy theories have the power to warp the fabric of society and justify unspeakable crimes.

In Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pull back the curtain on conspiracy theories: where they come from, who promotes them, how they work and what they’re doing to us. From biblical myth to online hysteria, this book explains what happens when the human gift for storytelling goes wrong – and how we might restore our common reality.

If you’ve already read about conspiracy theories much before, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s Conspiracy Theory doesn’t offer a lot that’s new. They try to tackle the history of conspiracy theories, the psychology of why we believe them, and also what can be done about them, which is a big ask in a small space.

The history manages to be reasonable thorough, or that’s my impression: I only vaguely knew about the original actual Illuminati, and there were aspects of historical USian conspiracy stuff that I didn’t know a lot about. It discusses Kennedy’s assassination, of course, but also more recent stuff like Pizzagate: it’s definitely modern and relevant, though feels slightly weird that it doesn’t address Trump’s new presidency and what that might mean for conspiracy theories (which is not the book’s fault, to be clear — it was released only just after the US election).

In a way, that fact makes the book feel defeated right away once we get onto the stuff about what to do about conspiracy theories, to be honest. How can one focus on deplatforming people who spout conspiracy theories when Trump’s about to be president again? [Not to mention everything that’s happening at the time of this review’s posting — it was originally written in January.] The chapter on defanging conspiracy theories is also quite short, because I think if that was the problem you want to solve… you wouldn’t want to start from here.

Ultimately, it was interesting but didn’t really add much for me. Rob Brotherton’s Suspicious Minds (which the authors reference) is better and more in depth.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – The Ten Teacups

Posted April 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Ten Teacups

The Ten Teacups

by Carter Dickson, John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

"There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested."

Writing as Carter Dickson, the master of the locked room mystery John Dickson Carr returns to the Crime Classics series, pitching his series amateur detective Henry Merrivale against a seemingly watertight mystery: after the police are sent a note warning them about a forthcoming crime, a man is shot in a room on the top floor of a Kensington townhouse – a house watched from all sides during the murder. Surely nobody could have gotten in or out? And yet the man is dead, and just like the last time the police received a note like this, there are ten teacups set out at the scene of the crime. H.M. is drawn to unravel this bizarre crime, as the mysterious significance of the ten teacups in murders past and present pushes the police to their limits.

Carter Dickson (AKA John Dickson Carr) was one of the masters of “impossible mysteries”, and to some extent your enjoyment of his work will depend on much you enjoy that genre. I’m not a huge fan, and I previously found Carr’s work frustrating, so even though I’ve come round to some appreciation of it, I found The Ten Teacups a bit frustrating.

The thing that gets me is that they’re always so contrived, with such tight constraints for them to function properly. And this book posits not just one impossible crime, but two. I won’t go too much into the details, but it really requires so much fine-tuning of murder that it always feels artificial to me. I did like the practice of footnoting back the pages where you can find the clues, though — or at least, I found it interesting as a convention.

There is one really macabre moment when you realise that someone has made a corpse into a chair to hide it, and is sitting on the corpse. Just. Yipes. There’s some genuine atmosphere in that portion of the story.

On another note, I found the portrayal of the Welsh character a little discomforting. Perhaps the aspect of him being wild/savage/atavistic wasn’t meant to be correlated with his Welshness, but I suspect it was, and that’s… just weird and unpleasant in a book from 1937. You’d have thought the Welsh would be seen as properly human by then, surely.

Not a favourite of Carr’s work for me, for sure, though your mileage is likely to vary: apparently this is regularly voted one of the best impossible mysteries of all time!

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

The Apothecary Diaries

by Natsu Hyuuga, Touko Shino

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels
Pages: 297
Series: The Apothecary Diaries (LN) #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A palace servant trained in herbal medicine finds herself in the heart of imperial intrigue in this enthralling period mystery!

Dismissed from the rear palace, Maomao returns to service in the outer court--as the personal serving woman to none other than Jinshi! That doesn't necessarily make her popular with the other ladies, but a bit of jealousy might be the least of her problems. A mysterious warehouse fire, an official with a very bad case of food poisoning, and the mysterious last will and testament of a deceased craftsman all demand her attention--but are these cases really separate, or do they share a troubling connection? Then there's the mysterious military man who continually visits Jinshi. He's strange, maybe even a little twisted...and he seems very interested in Maomao.

I probably shouldn’t have left it this long to review volume two of Natsu Hyuuga’s The Apothecary Diaries, but it’s one I really enjoyed, so I don’t want to be quiet about it even if my impressions aren’t so fresh! Maomao remains a really fun character: deeply practical in a way that comes across as a bit deranged. (Actually, that’s a thing I really like in characters in general — think Emily Wilde and Isabella Trent, too! Hmmmmm.) I love that Jinshi is fascinated by her and she just totally stonewalls his interest; I really wonder if this is meant to be a will-they-or-won’t-they or whether she’ll always say no to him. I feel like I want the latter, in some ways, but I’m already starting to feel sorry for Jinshi!

I do wish that we saw a bit more of Jinshi’s cleverness too, because at times it feels like Maomao’s the only competent one in the whole court, at least as far as solving these mysteries go. Sometimes that’s because she’s the only one with the knowledge of poisons, but still…

This volume does also dig a little bit into Maomao’s origins, and ouch. I wonder whether more will happen with that, or if this kind of wrapped it up? There are so many volumes to come, and I’m not sure yet what the ongoing threads might be, other than Jinshi’s fascination with Maomao.

I find these light novels really compulsive reading, super quick reads with total absorption, which is a nice feeling. And I kind of want to read the manga at about the same pace, so I have a few volumes of that to catch up with!

Looking forward to reading the next volume of the light novel soon, in any case.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

by Misaki, Momochi, Sando

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 200
Series: A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation #4
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When Lizel mysteriously finds himself in a city that bears odd similarities to his own but clearly isn't, he quickly comes to terms with the unlikely truth: this is an entirely different world. Even so, laid-back Lizel isn't the type to panic. He immediately sets out to learn more about this strange place, and to help him do so, hires a seasoned adventurer named Gil as his tour guide and protector.

Until he's able to find a way home, Lizel figures this is a perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life adventuring as part of a guild. After all, he's sure he'll go home eventually... might as well enjoy the otherworldly vacation for now!

In the fourth volume of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, the bandit plot continues, and the red-haired adventurer who has been interested in joining them before gets a bit more serious, introducing himself as Eleven. His antics give us a more serious side of Lizel — seriously, don’t get on his bad side — which is intriguing. It’s my understanding that the light novel makes it clear that Lizel’s actively manipulating people around him, which is implied several times in the manga, but perhaps less explicit: this time makes it pretty clear.

The Gil/Lizel vibes take slightly more of a back seat to Lizel/Eleven vibes, but there’s still a sense that Gil is the only one Lizel considers an equal, the only one he allows to see all sides of him.

It’s more and more obvious that there are barely any women in the series, which is a bit eyebrow-raising, but I still love the art and the dynamic between Gil and Lizel.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , , ,

Divider