Category: Reviews

Review – They Came To Slay

Posted January 11, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – They Came To Slay

They Came To Slay: The Queer Culture of DnD

by Thom James Carter

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 112
Series: Inklings
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Since its inception decades ago, the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons has offered an escape from the real world, the chance to enter distant realms, walk in new shoes, and be part of immersive, imaginative tales as they unfold. More so, in Thom James Carter's opinion, it's a perfect vessel for queer exploration and joy.

Journey on, adventurer, as Dungeon Master Thom invites readers into the game's exciting queer, utopian possibilities, traversing its history and contemporary evolution, the queer potential resting within gameplay, the homebrewers making it their own, stories from fellow players, and the power to explore and examine identity and how people want to lead their lives in real and imagined worlds alike.

Grab a sword and get your dice at the ready, this queer adventure is about to begin.

I’m not personally into D&D, though I know a lot of people who are and I’m close enough to the periphery that Thom James Carter’s They Came To Slay sounded interesting. It’s full of enthusiasm for D&D and its possibilities — possibilities for everyone, not just queer people, but especially for the opportunities it allows for queer people to explore and be recognised.

I’m vaguely aware of some critiques of Wizards of the Coast, and this book is largely positive toward the company, often suggesting that things are trending toward the better as far as queer representation goes. I don’t know enough about it to know if that’s true, and as far as I understand it, that’s not the only reason to be wary of the company, but it is interesting to read about the queer-positivity.

D&D still isn’t for me, but it does sound like there’s a joyous queer community around it, and that’s lovely.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 6

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

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 6

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 160
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #6
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

After dreaming of it for so long, Tanaka and Irie are finally a couple. Even as she relishes her modest happiness, Tanaka can't help but worry that Irie seems to enjoy talking with other people more than he does with her. A small new adventure begins for this side character, who only wishes to grow closer to her boyfriend...

Aaaah, volume six of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story is so cute. In this volume, their friends urge them to actually use one another’s personal names instead of family names, and Nobuko meets Hiroki’s family.

I love how patient Hiroki is, telling Nobuko they can go at their own pace… but how she pushes through discomfort to be as brave as he is about advancing their relationship. It’s just, aaah, despite Nobuko’s anxieties and their mutual awkwardness, they are so sincere and so dedicated to their relationship.

This is #relationshipgoals right here.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Space Rover

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

Review – Space Rover

Space Rover

by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 160
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit many equated with the space race. The lunar roving vehicles (LRVs) would be the first and last manned rovers to date, but they provided a vision of humanity's space-faring future: astronauts roaming the moon like space cowboys.

Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the LRV's legacy would pave the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity and Perseverance, who afforded humanity an intimate portrait of our most tantalizingly (potentially) colonizable neighbor. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl.

For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.

The Object Lessons series hasn’t always lived up to my hopes, with books that seem more like autobiographies than examinations of a type of object. Stewart Lawrence Sinclair’s Space Rover blends the two: there are definitely highly personal chapters, talking about the people who influenced him, and surprising connections to the space program and the space rovers, but he does also discuss the process of creating the rovers, the pitfalls, and the work they’ve done.

He also tries to ask — though not really at very much depth — why we create these rovers, what they do for us, and what they mean to us. I think the answers are complicated and he just touches on a few, rather than being exhaustive. In a way, he only briefly touches on how personally involved we get with the rovers, except that the book itself as a whole is a symptom of that fascination.

Personally, I think that one reason we identify so much with the rovers is that they can be our eyes and hands in a place we could not survive. It’s easy to identify with being the eye behind the camera: more than an astronaut can (having a personality, politics, opinions, needs), a rover can get out of its own way and personify all of us.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Man and His God

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

Review – A Man and His God

A Man and His God

by Janet Morris

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 39
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

An immortalized cavalry commander joins forces with the high-priest of the god of war.... Where myth meets legend, two men kiss and Tempus' world changes forever. Meet and mourn the Slaughter Priest in "A Man and His God." In this canonical short novel, the Sacred Band begins when Abarsis, Slaughter Priest, brings his Sacred Band to Tempus and dies in his arms.

In this pivotal story, the Sacred Band is formed from love and death....

"Tempus put an arm under Abarsis' head and gathered him up, pulling the wounded priest across his lap. “Hush, now.”

“Soon, soon,” said the paling lips. “I did well for you. Tell me so… that you are content. O Riddler, so well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him… I… fought beside you.”

“Go with more than that, Stepson,” whispered Tempus, who leaned forward and kissed him gently on the mouth; and Abarsis breathed out his soul while their lips yet touched."

This landmark short novel contains what may be the first male/male kiss in modern fantasy, and was widely reprinted, after appearing in somewhat different form in Thieves' World, in the Science Fiction Book Club, two Issac Asimov collections, and the Baen Book "Tempus" by Janet Morris.

It’s hard to know how to rate or talk about Janet E. Morris’ A Man and His God. As I understand it, it’s part of a larger world, and though it’s listed as being only 39 pages, I’d swear it was at least twice that. Maybe it was printed with the tiniest font imaginable.

Anyway, it has a semi-mythic register, and follows Tempus, a warrior who is currently on the outs with his god. It seems from the narrative that he’s cursed because he slept with his sister, and his sister is cursed because she manipulated him into it. Tempus’ feelings and intentions are often unclear, and I think that isn’t helped by the fact that this is actually cut out from a larger narrative.

The story is full of a general contempt for life and specifically for people different than oneself and for women. There is a kiss between Tempus and another man, Abarsis, as he dies, and there’s the Sacred Band who are all paired warriors, but… I can’t say that it felt particularly queer-positive in any way. There’s lots of violence, gratuitous levels of it, and torture.

Maybe it all fits together better if you read the whole original collection rather than these cut-out-and-revised fragments. That said, this part was published alone both in the past and now, so it should stand alone.

I think there’s an angle from which I can see that this is cleverly done, but the general contempt for everything that oozed off Tempus didn’t endear him to me, and it isn’t clear to me what level this is coming from: the character, the setting, the narrative, or the author. It’s not my thing either way, but one could admire it more if one was sure that the author doesn’t think they’re portraying a true hero.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – Saints

Posted January 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Saints

Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic

by Amy Jeffs

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 448
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on 'official' lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends' heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).

Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims. She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.

The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December.

Saints' legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes' suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.

Amy Jeffs’ Saints is intended to bring some of the excitement and attention we have for retellings of folklore to hagiographies (stories telling the lives of saints). She’s chosen a small sampling of all the possible stories and retold them, following each with some commentary on its context, meaning, etc. Most of them were unfamiliar to me (I’ve only studied a few Vitae, those which mention King Arthur), so the commentary was much-needed.

Jeffs’ style in retelling the stories is rather personal, informal, sympathetic; she gets into the heads of the characters and has us inhabit them for a few moments, which I rather liked, though it’s not usually how saints’ stories get told. That’s because she really is recounting them as folklore, as stories, rather than with belief — which, for some readers, might not be acceptable, I’m sure.

I would personally have liked a bit more of the commentary, since I have a reasonable feel for what hagiographies are like, but I enjoyed it. The paper cut illustrations add something as well, I think, though I’m not the most visual person.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Look Up, Handsome

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

Review – Look Up, Handsome

Look Up, Handsome

by Jack Strange

Genres: Romance
Pages: 361
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Quinn wants to save his bookshop, the last thing he needs is to fall in love…

Hay-on-Wye’s only queer bookshop is always a hive of activity. So when it’s threatened with closure, its owner Quinn Oxford is determined to do whatever it takes to save his beloved shop.

That is until romantic novelist Noah Sage arrives in town. Gorgeous, brooding and clearly unhappy to be there, Noah is the distraction Quinn doesn’t need. Noah has a history with Hay and it’s one he’d rather not face. But when the snow leaves him stranded, he’s left with no choice.

Hay is a small town, meaning Quinn can’t help but bump into Noah wherever he goes. And as the two grow closer together, is it possible that Noah’s feelings towards Hay will thaw? Can Quinn have a real-life romance and save his beloved bookshop? Or will he need a Christmas miracle…

Jack Strange’s Look Up, Handsome is a cute Christmas romance set in Hay-on-Wye, based around the fact that one of the romantic leads (Quinn) owns Hay’s only queer bookshop… which is under threat of eviction, without much chance of being able to set up anew. The other romantic lead is Noah, a romance writer who grew up in Hay, came back for a book-signing at a festival, and got stuck due to snow.

The two predictably flirt and seem close to forming a relationship, in and around efforts from Quinn and his friend Ivy to save the shop, but then it becomes clear that Noah actually has a partner already, which obviously complicates things greatly. (There’s no actual cheating by the letter of the law, so to speak, but it comes very close and the intent is there: if Quinn hadn’t put the brakes on, I don’t think Noah as written would’ve done so. So bear that in mind.)

There’s also a bunch of other relationships in the book which help make it feel alive: Quinn’s friendship with Ivy; Ivy’s fling with another character; Quinn’s relationship with his mother, step-father and sort-of cousin; Quinn’s work for Noah’s mother (an Oscar-winning actress hit by scandal), when he becomes her ghostwriter; Quinn’s vague knowledge of his assistant in the shop, Daniel Craig (who ends up in a relationship with a guy called James Bond)… and there’s Hay itself, written with love and an eye to Welshness (there are some Mari Lwyds!) that was appreciated by this reader. I didn’t actually love Hay an enormous amount myself on a brief visit, but this book made me want to go back and give it another shot — maybe in less miserable weather.

I think there could’ve been a bit more attention to the villain of the piece, though; he comes across as very one-dimensional, and it makes him feel like a pantomime villain. I think it’s realistic that he doesn’t come round and change his mind, to be clear, but it felt weird that he had no redeeming qualities in the present. There are some faint hints of supportiveness in the past, but… I think it would’ve felt more rounded if he’d been a little pained by what he’s doing, rather than being a clean-cut out-and-out villain.

Overall, it’s basically one of those small-town romances where everyone comes together, there’s a clear bad guy, and yes, there’s a happy-ever-after in the end. It felt more well-rounded and more grounded in a real location than I expected, though, and ultimately I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s probably somewhere between three stars and four, but I’m rounding up because I enjoyed the Welshness and the fact that it’s centered around a queer bookshop. Shout out to places like Portal Bookshop (York) and The Bookish Type (Leeds) for being great places for queer people to get books and community.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Camp Spirit

Posted January 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Camp Spirit

Camp Spirit

by Axelle Lenoir

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 208
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Summer camp is supposed to be about finding nirvana in a rock garden... But Elodie prefers Nirvana and Soundgarden. Can she confront rambunctious kids, confusing feelings, and supernatural horrors all at once?

Summer 1994: with just two months left before college, Elodie is forced by her mother to take a job as a camp counselor. She doesn't know the first thing about nature, or sports, of kids for that matter, and isn't especially interested in learning... but now she's responsible for a foul-mouthed horde of red-headed girls who just might win her over, whether she likes it or not. Just as Elodie starts getting used to her new environment, though -- and close to one of the other counselors -- a dark mystery lurking around the camp begins to haunt her dreams.

Axelle Lenoir’s Camp Spirit felt a bit like there were two halves, not equally split, that it kept jumping between: a summer love story between two camp counselors, Elodie and Catherine… and a spooky/supernatural story that involved the camp leader, and only later connected at all with what was going on with Elodie and Catherine.

The romance is cute enough, but it feels like it might actually have been stronger if it’d stuck to the summer of self-discovery between Elodie and Catherine or the supernatural plot. As it was, the supernatural plot felt side-lined compared to the teenage woes of those two.

It is, of course, also a very teenage book, given that a large part of what’s going on involves Elodie and Catherine developing feelings for each other.

I quite liked the art, and overall, I did have fun reading it, but it felt strangely slow — especially the first half or so.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Murder at the Ashmolean

Posted January 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Murder at the Ashmolean

Murder at the Ashmolean

by Jim Eldridge

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 320
Series: Museum Mysteries #3
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

1895. A senior executive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is found in his office with a bullet hole between his eyes, a pistol discarded close by. The death has officially been ruled as suicide by local police, but with an apparent lack of motive for such action, the museum's administrator, Gladstone Marriott, suspects foul play. With his cast-iron reputation for shrewdness, formed during his time investigating the case of Jack the Ripper alongside Inspector Abberline, private enquiry agent Daniel Wilson is a natural choice to discreetly explore the situation, ably assisted by his partner, archaeologist-cum-detective Abigail Fenton.

Yet their enquiries are hindered from the start by an interfering lone agent from Special Branch, ever secretive and intimidating in his methods. With rumours of political ructions from South Africa, mislaid artefacts and a lost Shakespeare play, Wilson and Fenton soon find themselves tangled in bureaucracy. Making unlikely alliances, the pair face players who live by a different set of rules and will need their intellect and ingenuity to reveal the secrets of the aristocracy.

Murder at the Ashmolean is the third in Jim Eldridge’s series featuring the ex-cop Daniel Wilson and the archaeologist Abigail Fenton. I think the second book had a certain charm for me because of the Arthurian link, but I was getting a bit tired of the formula in this book — I don’t think I’ll read more of this series, at least not for now.

The books are pretty quick reads, and the mystery is fine (no better or worse than many), but it feels sometimes like a bunch of cardboard cutouts moving around from scene to scene, distinguished by a few key features but ultimately all moving to order. I did like Abigail’s insistence on helping the female reporter they encounter — the two women’s interactions gave things a bit more reality.

Mostly, though, it feels a bit… paint by numbers? Which given the author’s bio boasts of over a hundred books published, kind of makes sense, unfortunately. There can be such a sameness to very prolific authors’ work; if you enjoy their work as it is, then that’s fine, but if you find it kind of meh in one book, it’s likely to strike you similarly in another.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Crypt of the Moon Spider

Posted January 2, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Crypt of the Moon Spider

Crypt of the Moon Spider

by Nathan Ballingrud

Genres: Horror
Pages: 128
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe. It's now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull's invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they're so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas. But trouble lurks in many a mind at this facility and although the spider's been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.

Nathan Ballingrud’s Crypt of the Moon Spider was very much a random choice for me, because I’ve been interested for a while in reading more short fiction, and the library happened to have this on their Halloween-themed table. Before I go on, I want to emphasise that you probably shouldn’t read the rest of this review if you’re arachnophobic, and this book probably isn’t for you. (Fiction and reality are two different things, of course, but if the thought of spiders makes you squirm, I’m pretty sure this one isn’t a place you want to go.)

It definitely brings the unsettling vibes, as Veronica Brinkley arrives on the moon to be treated for depression and is swiftly experimented on and abused, with the doctor using spider silk from long-dead Moon Spiders to replace parts of her brain he’s cut out.

Obviously that’s ick on various levels, and it doesn’t get any better when spiders start hatching inside people’s skulls — particularly Veronica’s, as something special has been implanted in her brain.

For me this one was a step too far out of my comfort zone in a direction that I’m not really interested in going. I’m not unduly arachnophobic (not compared to e.g. my germophobia), but spiders moving through my brain is definitely not an image I want to sit with. I think if I were rating objectively (not that I really believe there’s such a thing), I’d have to give it some higher marks for how well it manages some very unsettling images. But I rate based on enjoyment, and this one was solidly not for me.

There’s apparently to be a sequel, and I’m not sure where that would go — but I won’t be following!

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Lunar

Posted January 1, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Lunar

Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter

by Matthew Shindell

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 256
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

A beautiful showcase of hand-drawn geological charts of the Moon, combined with a retelling of the symbolic and mythical associations of Earth’s satellite.

President Kennedy’s rousing ‘We will go to the Moon’ speech on 25 May 1961 set Project Apollo in motion and spurred on scientists at the US Geological Survey in their efforts to carry out geologic mapping of the Moon. Over the next 11 years a team of 22 created 44 superb charts – one for each named quadrangle on the Earthside of the Moon.

In Lunar, for the first time, you can see every beautifully hand-drawn and coloured chart accompanied by expert analysis and interpretation by Smithsonian science curator Matthew Shindell. Long a source of wonder, fascination and symbolic significance, the Moon was crucial to prehistoric man in their creation of a calendar; it played a key role in ancient creator myths and astrology; and if has often been associated with madness. Every mythical and cultural association of the Moon throughout history is explored in this sumptuous volume, culminating in the 1969 Moon landing, which heralded the beginning of a whole new scientific journey.

Lunar, edited by Matthew Shindell, is a heck of a chunky book that I was lucky enough to borrow (and immediately decided my mother, a lunar nerd, needed to have). It’s full of geological charts of the moon, with commentary on each quadrant, punctuated by short essays on a range of lunar topics — the moon in silent film, the moon in fiction, women and the space programme, ancient Egypt and their understanding of the moon, and so on. There are various images included of relevant stuff like posters for movies about the moon, artefacts, etc.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t absorb half of it, and I’ll have to get another look at it at some point, especially because I’m very slow to parse visual information and I’m positive I missed things.

I suspect it’s most of interest to the real space nerds, given the expense, but if you get a chance to look through it, you should take a look just to wonder at what we’ve achieved.

Rating: 5/5

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