Genre: Non-fiction

Review – The Loki Variations

Posted January 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Loki Variations

The Loki Variations: The Man, The Myth, The Mischief

by Karl Johnson

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 96
Series: Inklings
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. Whether it’s deep in the stories from Norse mythology, the countless offshoots and intepretations across media, or even the prolific Loki that has come to dominate our screens via the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each serves its own purpose and offers a new layer to the character we’ve come to know so well.

By exploring contemporary variations of Loki from Norse god to anti-hero trickster in four distinct categories – the God of Knots, Mischief, Outcasts and Stories – we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself
and more.

Johnson invites readers to journey with him as he unpicks his own evolving relationship with Loki, and to ask: Who is your Loki?

And what is their glorious purpose?

Karl Johnson’s The Loki Variations digs into the character of Loki — not specifically the Norse god in his original form, nor Loki just as portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, but Loki as an overall concept. Pretty much what it says on the tin, in fact: he’s looking at the varied ways people have portrayed and enjoyed Loki’s character, and what he’s meant to people.

It’s nice to read something that takes pop culture seriously, because — regardless of how ephemeral or unimportant it can seem — it’s a great reflection of what’s on people’s minds. Johnson talks specifically about Loki’s queerness, which is linked to how difficult he can be to pin down: he’s not your typical Asgardian (in any incarnation), he’s not exclusively bad or exclusively good; he slides past definitions adroitly.

(A sudden thought: given the red hair and general inclination to mischief over evil, I wonder if Good Omens’ Crowley as portrayed by David Tennant is technically a bit of a variation on Loki himself. In some ways, no, but something of Loki’s instinct for self-preservation, adaptability, and unwillingness to be pinned down and defined does ring true for Crowley as well.)

Anyway, it’s a slim book and doesn’t go into enormous depth, but it’s written with a love for Loki and an appreciation for popular culture that I very much enjoyed.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Enchanted Creatures

Posted January 15, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 11 Comments

Review – Enchanted Creatures

Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and their Meanings

by Natalie Lawrence

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 368
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

The hydra rears its many heads in a flurry of teeth and poisonous fumes. The cyborg lays waste to humanity with a ruthless, expressionless stare.

From ancient mythology to modern science fiction, we have had to confront the monsters that lurk in the depths of our collective imagination. They embody our anxieties and our irrational terrors, giving form to what we don't wish to know or understand. For millennia, monsters have helped us to manage the extraordinary complexity of our minds and to deal with the challenges of being human.

In Enchanted Creatures, Natalie Lawrence delves into 15,000 years of imaginary beasts and uncovers the other-worldly natural history that has evolved with our deepest fears and fascinations. Join Lawrence on a tour of prehistoric cave monsters, serpentine hybrids, deep-sea leviathans and fire-breathing Kaiju. Discover how this monstrous menagerie has shaped our minds, our societies and how we see our place in nature.

Review edited 10th July 2025 to respond to the author’s rebuttal and give her concern about my review a fair hearing, now I have a copy of the book on hand again.

Natalie Lawrence’s Enchanted Creatures is a fairly entertaining read, an attempt to dig into why humans imagine monsters, and what various kinds of monsters mean to us and what they say about us. It’s unfortunately one of those books where the research is marred by bizarre mistakes; the most basic check on Google would yield the info that the Goblin King in Labyrinth is called Jareth, not Jared, for instance.

When that kind of easily-verifiable fact is wrong, it really casts everything else into doubt. There is a bibliography with some references, which is somewhat reassuring, but… Jared? I know that’s wrong and I’ve never even seen Labyrinth.

Or there’s a section where she refers to Circe as one of several snake women who’ve had modern novels written from their point of view. What? Circe isn’t associated with snakes (as far as I’ve ever heard).

[The author’s contention (in comments on this post) is that it is, quote, “rather obvious” that she is not referring to Circe as a “snake woman”, but instead as a “difficult female mythical character”. In response, I quote the book itself:

“Recent novels such as Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018), Natalie Haynes’s Stoneblind (2022) or Nikki Marmery’s Lilith (2023) give these snake women inner worlds, detangling them from the snakes.”

Possibly the author meant “snake women” to mean “a difficult female mythical character”, but this was far from clear, given the chapter concerns… you guessed it… snake women. Almost all, if not all, of the other examples are of women who are indeed associated with snakes. If she was switching tack to discuss “monstrous” women in mythology more generally, she should probably not have called them “snake woman” after a whole chapter that is literally about snake women.]

The more I think about it, the more it falls to bits — how can any conclusions be supported when this stuff is randomly mentioned without actual evidence? If you want me to accept that Circe’s a snake woman in some way, then we need the evidence.

Rating: 2/5

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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 – 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 – 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 – 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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Review – Digging For Richard III

Posted December 30, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Digging For Richard III

Digging For Richard III: The Search for the Lost King

by Mike Pitts

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 307
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

History offers a narrow range of information about Richard III which mostly has already been worked to destruction. Archaeology creates new data, new stories, with a different kind of material: physical remains from which modern science can wrest a surprising amount, and which provide a direct, tangible connection with the past. Unlike history, archaeological research demands that teams of people with varied backgrounds work together. Archaeology is a communal activity, in which the interaction of personalities as well as professional skills can change the course of research. Photographs from the author's own archives, alongside additional material from Leicester University, offer a compelling detective story as the evidence is uncovered.

I know most about Mike Pitts as an archaeologist who worked at Stonehenge, so I thought he could bring some archaeology and objectivity to the story of the discovery of Richard III’s burial. And he has a go at it, though sometimes he’s still a bit too sensational and breathless, even as he reports Phillippa Langley’s naivety with a sort of fondness at it. If he wanted to steer clear of that, there could’ve been less focus on Langley’s intuitions (which, while apparently accurate in this case, are hardly a basis for good archaeology — and it’s easy to big them up in hindsight).

Still, he does discuss the relevant history, both the period and a little about the site, and talks about the process of getting funds and permissions for the dig, along with some of the details of the excavation and the order of finds, etc.

I’d say this book probably doesn’t add anything much new if you were interested in the excavation at the time, or got interested and read about it since, but it’s not bad if you don’t know what was going on, if maybe a little dry in places because it is an archaeologist’s perspective more than a showman’s.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Book-Makers

Posted December 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Book-Makers

The Book Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives

by Adam Smyth

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 400
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A celebration of the printed book, told through the lives of 18 people who took it in radical new directions.

This is an extraordinary story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error. Of printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. Some we know. We meet jobbing printer (and United States Founding Father) Benjamin Franklin, and watch Thomas Cobden-Sanderson conjure books that flicker between the 20th and 15th centuries. Others we've forgotten. We don't recall Sarah Eaves, wife of John Baskerville, and her crucial contribution to the history of type. Nor Charles Edward Mudie, populariser of the circulating library - and the most influential figure in publishing before Jeff Bezos. Nor William Wildgoose, who meticulously bound Shakespeare's First Folio, then disappeared.

The Book Makers puts people back into the story of the book. It takes us inside the print-shop as the deadline looms and the adrenaline flows - from the Fleet Street of 1492 to present-day New York. It's a tale of contingencies and quirks, of successes and failures, of routes forward and paths not taken. This is a history of book-making that leaves ink on your fingers, and shows why the printed book will continue to flourish.

Adam Smyth’s The Book-Makers is about books as physical objects, for the most part: paper, ink, binding, assembly. And he clearly sees them as objects of beauty as well, and is fascinated by the way people have interacted with them as objects, not necessarily (or at least not wholly) based on the contents. He’s illustrated this history by choosing significant figures, such as Wynkyn de Worde, Benjamin Franklin, etc.

Because of his interest in books as objects, he doesn’t really discuss ebooks in any depth at all. They’re briefly mentioned, but that’s it. This is really specifically about books — or to be even more specific, about the history of the codex, rather than stories, or scrolls, or anything else. (He doesn’t say anything specifically anti-ereader, either, for those who find that really gets their goat. He’s just interested in something else.)

I found some of the chapters more interesting than others, and at times he does go in a bit more depth than I was entirely interested in — I felt bogged down by detail at times. Still, if you have a similar interest in books as physical objects, then this is likely of interest to you!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Dead of Winter

Posted December 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Dead of Winter

The Dead of Winter: The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas

by Sarah Clegg

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 208
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions and lore.

Here, Sarah Clegg takes us on a journey through midwinter to explore the lesser-known Christmas traditions, from English mummers plays and Austrian Krampus runs, to modern pagan rituals at Stonehenge and the night in Finland when a young girl is crowned with candles as St Lucy - a martyred Christian girl who also appears as a witch leading a procession of the dead. At wassails and hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these traditions originated and how they changed through the centuries, and we ask ourselves: if we can't keep the darkness entirely at bay, might it be fun to let a little in?

If you’re more into Halloween than Christmas, Sarah Clegg’s The Dead of Winter might bring you some joy. It’s all about the ghosts, witches and monsters of Christmas: we’re not talking Dickens here, but the Mari Lwyd, Krampus, Perchta, the Wild Hunt, and seeing premonitions of your own death.

It’s a relatively short book, but seems pretty well researched, and there are sources listed after each chapter. (Unlike, say, Judith Flanders’ book on Christmas traditions, it at least spells “Mari Lwyd” correctly, and doesn’t pretend it’s exactly the same tradition as  the Klapperbock and similar.) Clegg discusses various customs and how they’re related, and also joyously participates in some of them herself. It’s fascinating how creepy she found some of them (and how well she described that sensation of fun-with-an-edge-of-unease) — definitely wouldn’t catch me doing some of these things!

The book could’ve done with some editing, however, at least in the ebook version: there were at least two sentences that had either no beginning or no ending. The format on Kindle is also kind of annoying, because you have to tap the footnote symbol to go to the footnotes page for that chapter, where all the footnotes are denoted by symbols. I’m not very visual, and it was maddening to try to tell myself what symbol I was looking for to read the corresponding footnote, only to be stymied by the fact that they’re not that visually distinct.

Still, the content was interesting!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

Posted December 13, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

The Bookshop, the Draper, The Candlestick: A History of the High Street

by Annie Gray

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes a high street? It's certainly not just about the shopping; these thoroughfares are often the beating heart of our towns and cities and, by extension, of the people who use them. As spaces where local life and culture unfolds, our high streets can be playgrounds of personal indulgence and community spirit, or sites of contentious debate and politicking.

Historian Annie Gray takes us down the street and through the ages, from medieval marketplaces to the purpose-built concrete precincts of the twentieth century. Peeping through the windows of tailors, tearooms and grocers, we explore everything from the toyshops of yesteryear - where curiosities were sold for adults, not children - to the birth of brands we shop at today.

Vibrant and enticing, The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is an essential reflection on how we shopped and lived in days gone by - and what the future may bring.

It’s pretty well-established by this point that I love a book that does a deep-dive on a highly specific subject, so obviously I was very tempted by Annie Gray’s The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, a history of the high street. It starts with a chapter about shopping prior to the 1650s, and then discusses some broad eras from there, with the conceit that we’re going shopping with a certain level of means and a certain shopping list.

I wasn’t always in love with that conceit, I must admit; I wanted less about how “probably you’re quite tired by now and could do with a pick-me-up”, and more just facts. I get other people find that dry and boring, but I find the imaginative flourishes often just act like padding, and obscure the information that you’re reading for. I wonder if another format might’ve worked better, like chapters themed around types of shops (drapers, for instance) or a type of shopping (confectionary, menswear, etc) in order to really highlight how that changes over time.

Regardless, I did find this really fascinating, and it was interesting to reflect on my own experiences of high streets. Cardiff’s is definitely still alive, for instance, and apparently got the top spot in a consumer survey very recently. But where I grew up in Wakefield feels a bit more lacklustre, in part because of the semi-recent Trinity Shopping Centre built a few streets away, obviously designed to draw the life of the town there.

Annie Gray has a surprising optimism about the future of the high street. Certainly I’ve found myself both using my local high street more, coincidentally about the time I started reading this (grabbing stuff from Boots and Superdrug rather than online, for instance, and heading to a local bike shop instead of Halfords when I needed bike accessories), and being frustrated by the shops that have closed and gone away (I’d have patronised an M&S in person if they hadn’t moved to a spot outside of town). As someone returning to cycling, the local high street (such as it is) is somehow a lot more tempting now, especially with the library now sited much closer to it.

Rating: 3/5

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