Genre: Science Fiction

Review – The Spare Man

Posted February 15, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Spare Man

The Spare Man

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Science Fiction
Pages: 357
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Tesla Crane, one of the richest women in the world, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between Earth and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and her husband is named as the prime suspect. To save him from the frame-up, Tesla will risk exposure and face demons from her past.
Even though doing so might make her the next victim.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man is a fun mystery set in space, on a cruise liner to Mars, which uses the setting well to help shape the mystery: differences in gravity, technology, the delay in communicating with an earth-based lawyer, Tesla Crane’s status as a celebrity (and ways of handling that via technological and less technological methods of disguise).

I enjoyed the characters and their bond (even if it sometimes felt like they should maybe focus and not canoodle), and the portrayal of Tesla’s disabilities and how they affect her investigation — and of course, gotta love her support dog, Gimlet. All of those trappings help it feel less like just a Golden Age mystery in space, and also an attempt to talk about and show us specific characters and how they cope with a mystery. The fact that Tesla could dial her pain up and down was convenient, the idea of the technology does make sense (we have things that might be the beginnings of that already, after all), so I think it was a mostly-reasonable effort at having Tesla take part in some of the action without writing out her disabilities altogether, especially as she later faces consequences in terms of more pain.

I’d probably have liked to see her use her technological skills a bit more; there are reasons she doesn’t (related to her trauma), but… still. It was a way for her to contribute to solving the mystery a bit more actively, since mostly she didn’t fully see what Shal was working out. Instead, her money/status was often the key, which kinda felt like certain rich tech bros taking credit for being smart when they’ve actually just got practically infinite resources. Not my favourite aspect.

I diiiid find that at certain points the mystery seemed obvious to me, and was thus unnecessarily drawn out, but I still mostly enjoyed how the pieces came together. I did have a portion of it at least figured out before the reveal, though that was partly guesswork rather than fair play, I think.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Walking Practice

Posted February 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Walking Practice

Walking Practice

by Dolki Min

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
Pages: 166
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.

After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth's gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food? As they discover, humans are delicious.

Intelligent, clever, and adaptable, the alien shift their gender, appearance, and conduct to suit a prey's sexual preference, then attack at the pivotal moment of their encounter. They use a variety of hunting tools, including a popular dating app, to target the juiciest prey and carry a backpack filled with torturous instruments and cleaning equipment. But the alien's existence begins to unravel one night when they fail to kill their latest meal.

Thrust into an ill-fated chase across the city, the alien is confronted with the psychological and physical tolls their experience on Earth has taken. Questioning what they must do to sustain their own survival, they begin to understand why humans also fight to live. But their hunger is insatiable, and the alien once again targets a new prey, not knowing what awaits...

Dolki Min's haunting debut novel is part psychological thriller, part searing critique of the social structures that marginalize those who are different--the disabled, queer, and nonconformist. Walking Practice uncovers humanity in who we consider to be alien, and illuminates how alienation can shape the human experience.

Walking Practice features 21 black-and-white line drawings throughout.

Translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle.

Dolki Min’s Walking Practice (as translated by Victoria Caudle) was not to my taste, but interesting all the same. The alien narrator’s story is very much a metaphor for queerness (inasfar as something so obvious is still a metaphor) and transgression, and maybe also disability/neurodivergence too. There are observations about gender which aren’t particularly fresh/startling/unusual for a queer narrative, but nonetheless, pretty well expressed. The alien’s physiology and issues on earth are thought out enthusiastically, aiming for wildly non-human and doing a pretty good job of it.

Buuut the gore/sex was just a lot, and the scene which seemed kinda fatphobic where it wasn’t clear if it was a critique or joining in was… offputting, and the formatting when the alien is in its own form was a bit maddening and difficult to read. I did appreciate the translators’ note about the orthographic choices in the original and trying to find a way to mirror that in English — she didn’t have an easy job here!

So not a total success for me, but it was interesting.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Loving You When the World Ended

Posted January 16, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Loving You When the World Ended

Loving You When the World Ended

by Gene

Genres: Manga, Romance, Science Fiction
Pages: 146
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

An apocalyptic event forces two strangers to navigate a world where the old order is shattered. Is it survival of the fittest or survival of the richest? Spoiled Nuowan can’t stay alive in this new reality without the help of skilled hotel worker Yu Sen, whom he met only moments before the world ended. Yu’s former military training comes in handy but is kissing out of the blue a survival tactic?

Gene’s Loving You When the World Ended is a pretty short manga focused on the relationship between Nuowan and Yu post-apocalypse. Nuowan is a spoiled rich kid, and Yu’s an ex-military man who saves his life and works hard to keep him alive, since it seems possible that they’re the only humans left.

The apocalyptic stuff is very very light, and the focus is more on the relationship drama: Nuowan is demanding, childish, and wants Yu to put him first and love him no matter what, while ignoring Yu’s feelings. He acts on impulse and all his relationships are really rushed.

The art is OK, cute sometimes, but the story and relationship are pretty meh.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur

Posted November 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur

Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur

by Ian McDonald

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 128
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top.

To become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American west to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was a shoo-in for picking up Ian McDonald’s Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur, because… well… dinosaurs! There’s a whole world here built around the rodeo culture that grows up when dinosaurs can be brought through from the past, and it’s not always clear how important it is in general, whether dinosaurs are used outside the rodeo circuits, and even exactly how the rodeo world works. It feels like there’s a lot of potential that isn’t used, and there’s no reckoning with stuff that seems like it should be important (like a dinosaur getting sent back to the past after being shot with bullets which obviously shouldn’t be present in the past).

Mostly, it’s a sort of coming of age story for the main character, Latif, but even that seems a bit unfocused. I felt like I couldn’t see where the story was going, and once finished, I couldn’t see that we’d got much of anywhere at all. It felt like the author playing with the world more than creating a satisfying story.

There are some neat details and ideas, like the ocarinas/whistling used to communicate with the dinosaurs, and hints at the world outside the rodeo and the levels of technology around… but for me it didn’t come together.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Mooncop

Posted October 1, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – Mooncop

Mooncop

by Tom Gauld

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
Pages: 96
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

"Living on the moon . . . Whatever were we thinking? . . . It seems so silly now."

The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon.

Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. capturing essential truths about humanity and making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one. Like his Guardian and New Scientist strips, as well as his previous graphic novel, Goliath, Mooncop is told with Tom Gauld's distinctive, matter-of-fact storytelling and dry humor -- an approach that has earned him fans around the world.

If you like Tom Gauld’s art, Mooncop isn’t exactly a great departure for him in style. It’s pretty much exactly the style he uses in his strips for New Scientist and the Guardian, but this time it’s a continuous story. Not a very plotty story, it must be admitted, but nonetheless there’s a narrative here.

It’s a surprisingly melancholy one, and that feeling comes through perfectly despite an art style that I’d more usually associate with funny science or reading-based humour. There are very few characters, and quite a bit of repetition, showing us the life of the “Mooncop” as people leave the moon and head back to Earth.

It ends on an open note, preserving the melancholy feel. Will Mooncop stay on the moon much longer? Will the last other remaining person go back to Earth, too? That’s left for you to imagine.

I rather enjoyed it — it’s simple, but effective.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – R.U.R.

Posted September 15, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – R.U.R.

R.U.R.

by Karel Čapek

Genres: Classics, Plays, Science Fiction
Pages: 73
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

R.U.R. - written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922 - garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word 'robot'. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capek's Robots are an android product-they remember everything but think of nothing new. But the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning, and the humans they serve stop reproducing. When the Robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must strain to learn the secret of self-duplication. It is not until two Robots fall in love and are christened "Adam" and "Eve" by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant.

It’s always difficult (for me, anyway!) to review a classic like Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., because I usually rate on enjoyment of the story or quality of the book, but classics tempt me to rate based on significance as well. When I first read R.U.R. — which I’d actually forgotten that I had even read it before — I clearly didn’t really like it or get it, which is interesting.

This time… well, it’s still incredibly weird that all the main characters are in love with Helena, but other stuff stuck with me more, like this quotation:

“And that‘s not what your R. U. R. shareholders dream of either. They dream of dividends, and their dividends are the ruin of mankind.”

Oof. Just, oof.

In a way, it’s very predictable to the reader now, but also… unfortunately recognisable. That wasn’t the only bit that made me wince with recognition, for sure.

It’s also, of course, important for being the first use of the word “robots”, and there’s a line running through from R.U.R. to The Murderbot Diaries, even if it’s a long lineage. I’m glad I reread it and gave it some time again.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Last Murder at the End of the World

Posted August 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Last Murder at the End of the World

The Last Murder at the End of the World

by Stuart Turton

Genres: Mystery, Science Fiction
Pages: 354
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island―and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer―and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking.

Stuart Turton’s The Last Murder at the End of the World was a pretty fun read, particularly as I didn’t stop to think about it too hard (otherwise the gaps would’ve shown a bit more, I’m pretty sure). It’s basically setting up a closed-circle mystery and trying to keep the stakes high, even when really it’s all made a bit too obvious, by wiping everyone’s memory of the last 12 hours and introducing a strict deadline: even the murderer doesn’t know they committed the crime, and everybody’s going to die if they’re not found and proven.

It’s all very obvious when you look at the elements individually, but because it rattles along quickly, adding new bits of evidence (including of course plentiful red herrings) and raising the personal stakes for the character who acts as the detective, that isn’t too much of a problem.

I liked Emory and Clara, but felt like other than them (and a little bit Seth, especially toward the end), everyone else seemed a bit bland, especially since Thea was so unlikeable in her dismissal of the obvious personhood of the villagers.

Mostly, it seems like a writer having a lot of fun with writing a futuristic mystery that has a lot of classical elements, and I enjoyed that. Some of it feels a bit goofy/like a total plot device, but overall I enjoyed it. Definitely not for any hard SF purists, though.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Spirits Abroad

Posted August 15, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Spirits Abroad

Spirits Abroad

by Zen Cho

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories
Pages: 352
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

"If you live near the jungle, you will realize that what is real and what is not real is not always clear. In the forest there is not a big gap between the two."

A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Straddling the worlds of the mundane and the magical, Spirits Abroad collects science fiction and fantasy stories with a distinctively Malaysian sensibility.

Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad is a fun collection, with a lot of Malaysian background to the stories. She doesn’t waste time on explaining the Malay words she uses, but it’s usually perfectly clear from context, or easy to look up.

I don’t quite know why it didn’t work for me: there was nothing I could pinpoint as disliking in any of the stories, but something about the collection as a whole kind of dragged for me. I know I’ve liked some of the short stories in isolation, too, because I know I’d read a couple of them before — so I’m under the impression it just wasn’t the right time for me with this book.

All the same, I’m glad I finished it. I vaguely remembered ‘The Terracotta Bride’, but it surprised me all over again, and I really liked the imugi trying to become a dragon, as well. Maybe it wasn’t the right moment for me, but there was still a lot to enjoy, reading it piecemeal the way I did.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – What Stalks the Deep

Posted July 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – What Stalks the Deep

What Stalks the Deep

by T. Kingfisher

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
Pages: 192
Series: Sworn Soldier #3
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin—who went missing in that very mine—well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do...

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sometimes I think people’s reactions to the three stories so far in T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series are very telling about what frightens them. My favourite — the one I think is best — is the first one, because it plays on all my fears about contagion. The second book didn’t fill me with as much enthusiasm, and this one hit a different note: if you’ve read it, on the Ingold-to-Denton scale, I’m definitely on the Ingold end in terms of my reaction.

In other words, this one is barely horror to me and doesn’t scare me at all. I do appreciate it more than the second book (which, to be clear, I did also enjoy), but it was the finding of kin in Ingold, his fascination with what’s happening and with the mines, that was the key here. Which is fine, because I’m not necessarily interested in being scared, but I think it does add an edge and make things memorable. For me, the tensest thing about the book was actually Alex’s claustrophobia.

We do also see the aftermath of the first book for Denton — it’s good to link back up with him, and to understand how it affected him too. Differently, somewhat, but deeply, to the point where the best comfort he can imagine is summoning Alex to join him when weird shit starts going down again.

I continue to love the world-building about sworn soldiers, though there wasn’t that much of it in this one.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Lost Ark Dreaming

Posted June 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Lost Ark Dreaming

Lost Ark Dreaming

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 178
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa.

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this conflict: Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living—for everyone.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s book reminded me so much of Rivers Solomon’s The Deep after a certain point, it started to feel really weird. The setup kind of rang familiar too, or maybe “greedy rapacious billionaires set up unequal societies” is just too obvious. I did enjoy the build-up all the same, the scene-setting, and the sense of unease.

I think it’s a bit like showing the actual monster in horror, though: it fizzled a bit once we actually saw a Child, especially because the horror-ish vibes quickly fell away. I don’t want to say much and spoil the story, but… yeah.

Maybe at a novel length it might have worked better for me? A bit more setup, a bit more of the suspense first, get to know the characters… I think might’ve quite enjoyed it with that. But at novella length, I mostly just noticed the similarities and obviousness of the setup, and didn’t have time to get into the characters. Someone more driven by settings and themes while reading would probably enjoy it more!

Rating: 2/5

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