Tag: book reviews

Review – Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (light novel), vol 1

Posted March 10, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (light novel), vol 1

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

by singNsong

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels
Pages: 250
Series: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (light novel) #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU WILL SURVIVE.

Kill each other within the time limit or die. It’s just another evening commute on the train, until the passengers are given an order they can’t disobey. Utter chaos ensues, but ordinary office worker Dokja Kim only feels an unsettling calm. He knows exactly how this will play out! The subway car, the passengers’ reactions, even the bizarre creature that suddenly appears to oversee this sadistic scenario...everything is straight out of his favorite story, an online novel so obscure he is its sole reader. And as the only one who knows where the plot is headed, Dokja must use his knowledge to survive the oncoming apocalypse!

I didn’t know very much about singNsong’s Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint before picking it up — I’d seen friends be enthusiastic, been recommended it if I liked Solo Leveling (which I did) and it’s mentioned in Tiny Bookshop (though that might be the manhwa adaptation). I ended up burning right through it and really wanting the next volume — there’s something very compulsive about it.

Dokja Kim has spent his whole life reading this one webnovel, reading hundreds of chapters from when he’s being bullied in school to a temp job in his thirties, and then the novel starts coming true and he’s the only one who knows exactly what’s going on: that’s definitely compelling! He’s not always the most sympathetic character (he’s got his eye on survival rather than kindness), but the net result is that he ends up minimising slaughter and saving people. Reminds me indeed of Solo Leveling and the way Jinwoo decides to only rely on himself, and then ends up taking care of the people around him and saving the world. You expect it to take a darker turn.

There’s some interesting game-like mechanics in the world, and I’m very curious where it goes — and how Dokja and the people he’s saved, people who weren’t meant to survive, will change the story.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Tied to You, vol 1

Posted March 9, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Tied to You, vol 1

Tied to You

by WHAT, Chelliace

Genres: Fantasy, Manga, Romance
Pages: 334
Series: Tied to You #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Wooseo Shin was never one to believe in fate...until a ring of red thread appears around his finger, that is! This ring marks a person's meeting of their soulmate, and with it, neither can fall asleep if the other is absent. This development is not a welcome one for Wooseo, who decides to keep it from his close friend and crush Jiseok Kang at all costs. Because as fate would have it, the person with Wooseo's matching set is Jigeon Kang — Jiseok's older brother! When Jigeon proposes that they start sharing a bed, if only to combat their joint insomnia, Wooseo reluctantly accepts... but as the two spend more and more time together, feelings start to get messy. Will Wooseo be able to survive his new life tangled up in between these two brothers?!

The main character of WHAT’s Tied to You (adapted from a story by Chelliace) is Wooseo, who is in love with his best friend Jiseok. In this world, after the age of twenty, if you touch your fated partner, you fall sick for 24 hours, and then a red ring forms — like the red thread of fate — for both you and your partner. After that point, you can’t sleep apart, and when you sleep side by side and touching, you get the best sleep you’ve ever had in your life.

Wooseo’s partner isn’t Jiseok, though… it’s Jiseok’s older brother, Jigeon, who had been close to the pair but pulled back for some reason a while ago. Wooseo’s afraid that Jigeon hates him, but it turns out more complex than that (of course). At first, they treat it as a transaction: I’ll pay you to come and sleep beside me so we can both get some sleep. Then Jigeon pushes for more, getting Wooseo to move in with him — all while the two of them hide the whole thing from Jiseok, who seems to be getting jealous, despite repeatedly saying he’s totally straight and not interested in Wooseo.

It’s all a bit of a tangled mess, and it’s not entirely clear how to take some of Jigeon’s behaviour; is he being creepy? Is it Jiseok being weird? Are the two of them just gonna ride rough-shod over Wooseo and what he needs…?

The art and colours are lovely (though some character designs are very similar, partly on purpose), and I’m curious enough about the plot/relationship to read more — especially since it’s a manhwa, so it doesn’t take that long to read a volume. I’m not quite sure how it’ll land with me, but I guess we’ll find out!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Strange Buildings

Posted March 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Strange Buildings

Strange Buildings

by Uketsu

Genres: Horror, Mystery
Pages: 384
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Eleven strange buildings. One terrible secret.

A lonely hut in the woods.
A murder house.
A hidden chamber.
A mysterious shrine.
A home in flames.
A nightmarish prison…

Each of the buildings in this book tells a chilling story. Each one is part of a puzzle.

Look closely… and you’ll see that everything is connected.

All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won’t want to believe it.

Millions of readers have become addicted to solving Uketsu’s dark mysteries.

Strange Buildings is the strangest, and darkest, of them all.

Uketsu’s Strange Buildings is a follow-up to Strange Houses: I don’t think you need to start with the former, but there are several references to it, and since the mysteries are similar in principle, it can help put together the whys and wherefores of the cases presented in this one. I liked Strange Houses quite a bit; I think Strange Buildings is a bit looser, with a higher page count used to detail eleven cases and then extensively unpack how they relate to each other.

While the mystery in Strange Houses wasn’t exactly sunshine and daisies (houses built in order to facilitate murder and child abuse), it’s worth noting that things are a bit darker again in this one, with themes like child prostitution, children being coerced into murdering family members, cults and brainwashing, infidelity, and other child abuse into the bargain.

So… a light romp this isn’t, though it’s a little disconnected from the horrors by the narration, which is a bit journalistic in angle. It follows the same format as Strange Houses, mostly, presenting floorplans for you to figure out what’s strange… though I found them a bit less obscure, maybe? I kind of figured out how things were lining up and the links between the mysteries, so that helped — after a few, it becomes obvious what the key factors to consider are.

It’s not really about characterisation or anything, so beware of that going into the story: there are two characters which recur from the previous book, but they’re mostly an excuse to gather the stories and a way to dissect them for the reader and finally reveal the truths behind the weird floorplans.

It was still a pretty quick read, though probably about double the length of time I took to read Strange Houses. I’m still enjoying the format very much, and looking forward to what’s next — Strange Maps, apparently!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – wake

Posted March 7, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – wake

wake

by Gillian Allnutt

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 64
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

When Gillian Allnutt was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, Carol Ann Duffy wrote that her work ‘has always been in conversation with the natural world and the spiritual life’. Her ninth collection, wake, shows the two beginning to meld into one: to speak for, even as, one another. As her title signals, these are poems about looking back, keeping watch over the dying and death of an old world and the ways of being human in that world; but also forward, waiting for the new world and being ready to awaken to it when it comes.

There are, as always in her work, many displaced people. No one here is fully at home in the world. These are turbulent times – individually and collectively – and the poems here reflect that. And yet the poems are more ‘among’ than ‘about’ people: speaking out of the horde, and the hoard, of humanity as a whole.

Unfortunately, Gillian Allnutt’s wake was absolutely not for me. I had difficulty finding any poem I actually liked in it — maybe a line here and there, but… I just didn’t “get” it. Some of them were too short to feel like anything (though I often have that problem with very short poems), and it felt like they were lacking all the connective tissue to make them flow and make sense of them for myself.

This may have been made worse by the fact that the notes at the end of the collection weren’t obviously linked in the ebook, so I only read them after reading all of the poems already. Some of the notes do explain things a bit better, but since I had no idea they existed (I only saw the small translation notes on the same page as each poem, no sign of more info) they didn’t really have an impact on my reading experience.

Since a favourite poet of mine (Carol Ann Duffy) praised Allnutt, I was/am willing to believe it’s a deficiency in me here — though I did check back what she said exactly and it was more of a description than outright praise, so I suppose it could’ve been one of those misleading snippets where actually in the full version it’s clear that the writer wasn’t overwhelmed with it. I haven’t looked for more context… I’m just resigned to the fact that I didn’t ‘get’ or like this one.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – Vanished Wales

Posted March 6, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Vanished Wales

Vanished Wales: Places Lost In Living Memory

by Carwyn Jones

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 180
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Vanished Wales: Places Lost in Living Memory is the book to accompany one of ITV Wales’ most popular shows. It explores the fascinating stories of lost landmarks: places in Wales that have disappeared from towns, cities and villages within living memory. As in the series, the book shines a spotlight on this missing heritage, featuring stories from local people who still have a deep personal connection with the remarkable sights that were once on their doorstep.

Lost communities, hives of industry, popular public buildings, cultural and sporting venues, wartime placements, Victorian superstructures and even entire villages: these are once prominent places that have been wiped off the map. Including before and after images from the show, Vanished Wales sings their epitaph.

Carwyn Jones’ Vanished Wales is based on an ITV series I haven’t seen, but I don’t think you need to have seen the series to get something out of it. It focuses not on ancient history, but on Welsh touchstones and homes that have vanished in the last seventy years or so. Some of them are still floating in awareness even for me, despite being destroyed before I was born — and my parents certainly remember them. Others are a bit more obscure.

Given the brief, I was surprised at the exclusion of the obvious target: Capel Celyn, the village drowned to create a reservoir in order to send water to, I kid you fucking not, Liverpool. Yes, you read that right: Liverpool. For industry, to be clear. Perhaps that was still a tad too raw and political for the series? It touches a little bit on local politics, and on people who don’t live in the villages and so on deciding the fate of them, but maybe Capel Celyn still provokes too much anger for ITV. Who knows?

It’s full of photographs (some necessarily old/poor quality, since there’s nothing there to photograph now) and little testimonials/anecdotes/memories from people who lived in/near the vanished places. An interesting read, even if it felt somewhat milquetoast given the impact English industrial aspirations had on Welsh places.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – How to Fake It In Society

Posted March 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – How to Fake It In Society

How to Fake it In Society

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 320
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

It is 1821 and Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte is making a splash in London Society. The son of Jeanne de Valois de La Motte, infamous for stealing a priceless diamond necklace meant for Marie Antoinette, Nico hopes to restore his wronged mother's reputation, if only he can raise the funds. But he must operate with great secrecy, because the Bourbon dynasty murdered his mother, and he fears for his life.

At least, that's what he tells Titus Pilcrow. Titus was a simple shopkeeper, making and selling artists' paints, when he found himself suddenly married to an immensely wealthy woman who wanted to disinherit her nephew on her deathbed. As word spreads of his fortune, Titus finds himself a target of every scammer and beggar in London…including one Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte.

Nico is on his last legs, out of money, and on the run from some terrifying gangsters. When Titus offers Nico a space in his household, it's the perfect chance for him to exploit London's newest golden purse—until he falls in love with the man he needs to cheat. Still, Nico is sure they can have a happy ending together. If he can just find his way out of his own web of lies…

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.

My only problem with KJ Charles’ How to Fake It In Society was that I spent the entire thing bracing for the third-act breakup. I knew it was coming, Nico knew it was coming, Eve knew it was coming, everyone knew it was coming — and why — except for Titus, and it was excruciating. It’s like watching a car crash when it’s reached the point of inevitability and it’s going in slow-mo: you can’t do anything to stop it, so you can only watch it with horror.

Nico and Titus are a lovely match, with Nico putting his effrontery and ability to manage people at Titus’ disposal, and steering him toward a path where he can be happy. Nico’s good points are also his flaws, in a way that’s delightful to watch happen to someone else — it just all makes so much sense, and even his awareness of the likelihood of the third-act breakup is part of why things spin out of control for him.

Titus is a sweetheart; I feel that in some ways, his personality has been kicked out of him by his abusive childhood and abusive adult relationship, but we see glimmers of it all the same in his steadfast sticking to what’s right over what’s easy.

The ending involves some ridiculous dramatics, which I mean in the best way possible.

Overall, a lot of fun, I just wish that romance in general didn’t rely so heavily on the breakup and dramatic get-together, because knowing that’s coming — even though I know it’ll be made good — really saps my fun. I get that it’s part of how you add the conflict in, and Charles usually does so in a way that makes sense for the characters and scenario, something that feels natural rather than contrived… but I’m still not a fan of the structure.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Platform Decay

Posted March 4, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – Platform Decay

Platform Decay

by Martha Wells

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 256
Series: Murderbot Diaries #8
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells' bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

Having volunteered to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for... eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

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.

Platform Decay is the latest of Martha Wells’ Murderbot books, and it has the usual ingredients: a Murderbot who’s very done with humans (but not so done it’s actually going to murder them, at least not unless you provoke it), stupid corporates being broadly horrifying, and a bunch of humans who need protecting from the latter by the former. In addition, this one includes a torus station, which Murderbot didn’t know it’d hate so much until it was trying to traverse it.

I have to admit, I’m starting to think if Murderbot needs a break, or the feeling of a tighter narrative arc, or something: this book felt like essentially more of the same. It’s fun because Murderbot’s narrative voice is fun (mostly; caveat below), and because we care about Murderbot, but there’s much that feels like the status quo. Maybe there’s more coming due to Three’s actions in this book? There are some developments (Murderbot’s got a therapy module! and it felt like it was trying way harder to avoid lethal violence than before; Three’s getting itself involved)… but it’s hard to be sure whether we’re going somewhere specific or whether we’re just riding shotgun on Murderbot’s mission of the week, and this felt a bit more like the latter.

In addition, the narrative voice in the first chapter was too Murderbot. There were three or four parenthetical thoughts per paragraph, and it really stuttered the action and made it almost unintelligible to read at times. That’s partly because of how the book starts, and the fact that Wells seems to have wanted to make a certain aspect of the situation unclear until Murderbot’s “oh, by the way” (which failed for me, it was completely obvious).

I did enjoy the story once I got into it, but it has lost some of the freshness, and it feels like maybe it needs a heavier edit or something to rein in some of the inclination toward wordiness: yes, that’s the way Murderbot is, but it still needs to be readable. Or maybe I just need a longer break from Murderbot — that’s possible too.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

Posted March 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter

by Heather Fawcett

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 368
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Agnes Aubert is very fond of making lists. These lists kept her afloat when she lost her husband two years ago. And now, as the founder of a cat rescue charity, her meticulous organization skills feel like the only thing standing between her beloved cats - His Majesty, Banshee and sweet elderly Thoreau, to name a few - and utter disaster.

But when Agnes is forced to move the charity, she soon discovers that her new shop is being used as a front; right under her feet is the lair of the decidedly disorganised - not to mention self-absorbed and infuriatingly handsome - Havelock Renard.

Havelock is everything Agnes doesn't want in her life: chaos, mischief, and a little too much adventure. But as she gets to know him, she discovers he's more than the dark magician of legend, and that she may be ready for a little intrigue, perhaps even romance. After all, second chances aren't just for rescue cats. . .

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 keen to get hold of Heather Fawcett’s Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter more or less from the word go, based on the title and the fact that I really enjoyed the Emily Wilde books. And indeed, I had a lot of fun: Agnes is an older female character who lost her husband and now focuses just about constantly on the fortunes of her cat shelter, an endeavour which isn’t meeting with a lot of success in her city. She’s struggling to find a new landlord after the destruction of the last shelter, but gets drawn to a particular shop that other businesses seem to avoid.

Naturally that’s the start of the real trouble, since it turns out to be a front for an illicit magic business. Magic is particularly looked down on since a dreadful wizard recently tried to end the world — or at least, that’s what everyone assumed happened. You won’t be surprised to hear that we learn otherwise in the course of the story, though I won’t spoil the details.

There’s also a little touch of romance, and it’s partly that which made me feel like this was veeery reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle (a mixture of the book and the Studio Ghibli film, actually). I don’t mean plagiarism, just that it has certain vibes in common, to be clear. It’s not as humorous, and it’s a bit more clearly aimed at an adult audience (the romance is very light, but the characters aren’t teenagers and don’t have teenage concerns)… but something about the way the characters interact, and the story behind the magic, gives off those vibes.

I didn’t like it as much as the Emily Wilde books, I think, but I feel fondly about it and had a good time reading. And for those who read one of my other reviews lately where I pointed out that the cats got treated as objects for human convenience, I can reassure you that these cats were definitely their own creatures entirely. I felt a little sad about His Majesty here, but at the same time, he’s very much a cat… And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Iyanu: Child of Wonder, vol 1

Posted March 2, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Iyanu: Child of Wonder, vol 1

Iyanu: Child of Wonder

by Roye Okupe, Godwin Akpan

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 120
Series: Iyanu: Child of Wonder #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Iyanu, a teenage orphan with no recollection of her past, suddenly discovers that she has abilities that rival the ancient deities told in the folklore of her people.

It is these abilities that are the key to bringing back an age of wonders, as Iyanu begins her journey to save a world on the brink of destruction! The Corrupt--cursed wildlife and strange, divine beasts--are determined to destroy humanity, unless Iyanu can stop them.

I really liked the colours in volume one of Roye Okupe’s Iyanu: Child of Wonder, and I like the character designs too, but something about the art doesn’t work for me — kind of an uncanny valley sort of thing, I think? There are some pages where it really threw me somehow.

The story itself is fairly familiar/unsurprising, with a chosen one and an in-group protecting themselves by high walls, oppression, etc. What I got fascinated by was the backstory, partly based on Yoruba customs, which is given in snippets between the chapters and then discussed in quite a bit of detail at the end of the book. It’s an interesting set-up.

I don’t think I’ll be continuing with this series, but I’m glad I gave it a shot. It’s probably for a younger audience, mostly; I can imagine an eleven year old eating it up and loving Iyanu.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Seasonal Disturbances

Posted March 1, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Seasonal Disturbances

Seasonal Disturbances

by Karen McCarthy Woolf

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 84
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Following her groundbreaking 2014 debut An Aviary of Small Birds ("technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak" - Observer), Karen McCarthy Woolf returns with Seasonal Disturbances. Set against a backdrop of ecological and emotional turbulence, these poems are charged yet meditative explorations of nature, the city, and the self. A sinister CEO presides over a dystopian hinterland where private detectives investigate crimes against hollyhocks; Halcyon is discovered as a dead kingfisher, washed up on an Italian beach. Lyrical and inventive, McCarthy Woolf's poems test classic and contemporary forms, from a disrupted zuihitsu that considers her relationship with water, to the landay, golden shovel, and gram of &. As a fifth-generation Londoner and daughter of a Jamaican emigre, McCarthy Woolf makes a variety of linguistic subversions that critique the rhetoric of the British class system. Political as they may be, these poems are not reportage: they aim to inspire what the author describes as an "activism of the heart, where we connect to and express forces of renewal and love."

Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Seasonal Disturbances had a few poems or bits of poems that I found interesting and enjoyed, but overall it wasn’t a favourite. It might be partly the fault of the ebook format (I read it from the National Poetry Library’s Overdrive offerings, and Overdrive seems to not always display things the way they’re meant to be read), because there was eventually an explanation for what seemed like random unrelated lines at the end of a poem.

That said, I can only review based on the experience I actually had, and that was pretty confusing. It felt at times like the different stanzas of poems had no relationship to one another at all (and I don’t just mean the one about water that was definitely deliberate, which taught me a new term, “zuihitsu”). Maybe I’m not clever enough for this! Though, clever or not, I have two degrees in English literature, did study poetry within that, and did get good grades, so take that for what that’s worth — partly personal taste, partly not knowing what a “zuihitsu” is in advance, etc.

There was a bit from ‘Ars Poetica 101’ that I did like and wanted to save for myself for later (excerpted below), so it wasn’t a wholly bad experience — but definitely not a great success for me.

Poetry is
what the sea sings to the
last insatiable human
who thinks he’s the only one with a voice
to flood the dark with music and
dance or wonder who we are
and why we’re here or how we
became I, so exclusively…

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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