Tag: book reviews

Review – Honey & Pepper

Posted April 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Honey & Pepper

Honey & Pepper

by A.J. Demas

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 222
Series: When In Pheme #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Newly freed from slavery, Nikias is making a life for himself in the bustling city of Pheme, working at a snack stand, drinking with a group of anti-slavery radicals, and pining for the beautiful law clerk next door. When he sees his crush attacked in the street by an outraged ex-client, it seems it’s finally Nikias’s chance to be the hero.

Kallion doesn’t need a rescue. What he really needs is a skewer of octopus fritters (with extra sauce) and a friend. Nikias can supply both, and maybe, with the help of Nikias’s skill in the kitchen and Kallion’s excellent collection of wine, they can fight past their misunderstandings and the disasters of their pasts to something deeper.

But when civil unrest roils the city and old threats resurface, the trust these two have built will be tested. And they’d both better hope that Kallion’s vicious former master will just stay dead.

Honey & Pepper is a standalone m/m romance and also the first book in the When in Pheme series set in an imaginary ancient world.

I really enjoyed A.J. Demas’ Honey & Pepper. I wasn’t sure if I would, due to the initial misunderstanding (both because it revealed that Nikias had some kind of shame about his desires, and because I wasn’t looking forward to the two of them angsting about it). But I gave it a chance anyway, and was glad: Nikias swiftly comes to realise he was rude, and that also makes clear his character as someone who is willing to be wrong, willing to think, willing to self-examine. And Kallion, for his part, forgives easily enough, because the two of them are in a situation created by the fact that they have both been slaves, and they understand how that shapes you.

Nikias is fairly straightforward as a character — his heart is well and truly on his sleeve. Kallion took longer to open up, but fortunately it didn’t happen as a third-act breakup or something like that. Instead, a plot that was already hinted at comes to the fore, and wraps things up enjoyably.

I enjoyed both Nikias and Kallion’s characters, and their interactions: the way that Nikias sweetly takes charge because that’s what Kallion needs/wants, and the positive communication between them (mostly from Nikias, but I don’t think there’s ever much doubt about Kallion’s needs and wants, even if he’s less clearly verbal about them). They work well as a couple, and I liked the supporting characters, too.

The villain of the piece is a bit unsubtle, and that part is all very black-and-white; in such a short book, there isn’t really time to add more depth, I suppose, but beside Kallion and Nikias, it felt a bit pantomime villain-y.

One thing to note, though: while slavery isn’t romanticised, there’s a touch of romanticisation of some of the slave-owning characters. I think that’s addressed somewhat by Nikias’ firm opinions on the matter (including that he is clear that he loved his master, and still thinks his master acted wrongly), and Kallion also comments on the fact that past inaction matters somewhat in the balance (though he isn’t talking directly about the owning of slaves). Still, one of the female characters is rather lionised for deciding to free her slaves and invest in the businesses of freedmen, but prior to that she did put up with an awful lot of slavery and mistreatment of slaves without doing anything about it. It feels like a little bit of a blind spot to me.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, volume 1

Posted April 14, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, volume 1

Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon

by Shio Usui

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 170
Series: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Uno Hinako throws herself into makeup, fashion, and falling in love, hoping that will make her seem normal to the other people at her job. But no matter how hard she tries, she's a self-doubting mess inside, and her attempts at normal romance with men just keep failing. When she starts to think she might be alone forever, a new normal presents itself in the form of her relationship with Asahi Sato, a level-headed woman who works at her company, which starts as respect until it becomes far more intimate.

Shio Usui’s Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon is a cute story about two coworkers who appear not to have much in common, who start to find they have more in common than they thought, and that they enjoy one another’s company. It’s obviously heading toward romantic territory, but the author doesn’t rush the gate and have them jumping there: in this first volume, they’re just becoming friends, and starting to see that they’re not alone.

The main character, Hinako, is trying hard to be the perfect woman: approachable, pretty, accommodating, and willing to try dating just about anyone her friends suggest in the desperate effort to find a man she can fall in love with. Her insecurity and confusion is obvious and painful as she tries to figure out why she doesn’t want what she thinks she “ought” to want — and what she might want instead.

We see less of Sato’s point of view, but she’s a slightly older woman who seems pretty secure in herself and confident, despite having chosen the things that Hinako thinks will have her rejected by people. She and her sister have an enjoyable relationship too: it’s not just about Sato and Hinako, but also about the people around them.

Vibes-wise, this feels like an f/f version of A Side Character’s Love Story, in many ways — which is a series that I adore. I was keen to pick up a bit more of this at least and see where it goes; that said, having done so, I should point out that the lesbians are both explicitly asexual, and there’s a certain amount of horror and self-loathing along the way. It’s fairly light as things go, but it’s worth knowing, and though it is ace rep, there’s of course always the problem that sometimes that’s just to render it more acceptable socially (or because of censorship).

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A Fish Caught in Time

Posted April 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Fish Caught in Time

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth

by Samantha Weinberg

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

A gripping story of obsession, adventure and the search for our oldest surviving ancestor - 400 million years old - a four-limbed dinofish

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young South African museum curator, caught sight of a specimen among a fisherman's trawl that she knew was special. With limb-like protuberances culminating in fins the strange fish was unlike anything she had ever seen. The museum board members dismissed it as a common lungfish, but when Marjorie eventually contacted Professor JLB Smith, he immediately identified her fish as a coelacanth - a species known to have lived 400 million years ago, and believed by many scientists to be the evolutionary missing link - the first creature to crawl out of the sea. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer had thus made the century's greatest zoological discovery. But Smith needed a live or frozen specimen to verify the discovery, so began his search for another coelacanth, to which he devoted his life.

I didn’t really expect to be hooked when I picked up Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time. Fish aren’t a huge interest of mine, even coelacanths, and in many ways the book is quite biographical in detail, discussing the life of J.L.B. Smith and Margaret Smith in quite a bit of detail, along with some of the other personalities who searched for live coelacanths.

Nonetheless, I found it surprisingly riveting! And that’s always fun, when a book turns out to surprise you. And there are details about coelacanths too, and the controversies surrounding them (are they a missing link between the water and the land, for example? and do they bear live young, or not?), which the biographical details help to highlight and contextualise.

It also helps to make the political implications of coelacanths and their territories very clear; I hadn’t particularly thought about who might consider themselves to own coelacanths, and yet it’s very clear that various countries and localities and political bodies have tried.

If you’re looking for something that’s more of a deep dive into coelacanth biology and ecology, this wouldn’t be it — but it’s an interesting history of the moment the first recently-dead coelacanth was found, and what it meant, and what it led to.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Navigational Entanglements

Posted April 11, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Navigational Entanglements

Navigational Entanglements

by Aliette de Bodard

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 176
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the Hollows: a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power—but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

HáșĄc CĂșc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her resume: “information gathering”—right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this group: they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together—fast—before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.

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.

Aliette de Bodard’s Navigational Entanglements has quite a bit going on for a novella, with a bunch of worldbuilding around the navigators, their clans, the Empire, the politics between them, and the dangers of creatures that lurk out there in space. Việt Nhi, a junior, is sent with a couple of others (none of whom get along very well) to find and kill a tangler, a strange creature whose touch can kill humans. Predictably, things don’t go to plan.

Việt Nhi likes secrets and she likes rules. She likes to understand what’s at the root of things, because that’s easier to understand than the shifting rules of conversation and interaction with peers. She’s quickly drawn to one of her companions, HáșĄc CĂșc, because even though she’s dangerous and relationships don’t usually seem to go well anyway, HáșĄc CĂșc seems to understand a bit of what makes her tick, and want to work with it. Meanwhile, HáșĄc CĂșc is struggling with her own feelings of inadequacy, her worry that she isn’t half as kind or capable as her mentor, her expectation that she’ll hurt those around her.

It makes for a pretty sweet romance, as each goes out on a limb for the other, and the bond that forms between them is also part of what makes the story come together. Their relationships with the other characters are less central, but also part of what makes it all tick — I got pretty caught up in whether they’d all come through for each other (and it didn’t feel like a foregone conclusion).

It works well at novella length, providing a story that’s both a glimpse of a larger world and complete in itself as far as Việt Nhi, HáșĄc CĂșc and their motley band go. There are surely other adventures ahead of them, and there’d be room for a sequel — but it’s also complete in itself.

I did have to chew on this a bit to decide how much I liked it, because it wasn’t something I instantly connected with, but I enjoyed it the more for thinking over it.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Posted April 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 464
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Work defines who we are. It determines our status, and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hard-wired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like?

To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same.

Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.

James Suzman’s Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time didn’t really go where I expected. It takes a very long view of work and starts before humans even evolved, down at the level of cells doing “work” and life acting ultimately to increase entropy (even as it appears to create order). He spends a long time discussing the early evolution of humans and human society, discussing hunter-gatherer societies (extrapolating back from currently existing ones to make guesses about earlier ones, which is always dangerous though probably justifiable).

When he eventually got round to farming societies, half the book was already gone, and he dashed madly onward to do industrial societies at a gallop. I felt like half of this book wasn’t on topic, and some of his promises weren’t kept in terms of what he was going to discuss. Either a lot of the first part needed to be cut, to keep things at a relatively surface-level throughout… or he needed to go just as in-depth on the second half.

There were some interesting titbits here, including contradictions to received wisdom about sexual selection that’s intriguing and which I want to look into further, but it just doesn’t come together well.

Also, the editing was very shaky in some places. Typos galore! Ouch.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – A Telegram from Le Touquet

Posted April 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Telegram from Le Touquet

A Telegram from Le Touquet

by John Bude

Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

With some trepidation Nigel Derry approaches the country house of his enigmatic and unpredictable aunt Gwenny for an Easter holiday visit. After a tense few days in which her guests’ interactions range from awkward dinners to a knife fight, a disgruntled aunt Gwenny departs for Europe. Receiving a telegram from Le Touquet inviting him to join Gwenny in the south of France, Nigel finds himself on a vacation cut short by murder as a cold shadow of suspicion eclipses the sunny beauty of the Cîte d’Azur.

Enter Inspector Blampignon of the Sûreté Nationale, whose problems abound as the case suggests that the crime may have occurred hundreds of miles away from where the victim was discovered. Undeterred, the formidable French detective embarks on a thrilling race to discover the truth in this rare and spirited mystery novel, first published in 1956.

A Telegram from Le Touquet is pretty much what one expects of John Bude: a mostly competent mystery without flair, with a few thumbnail sketches of characters but not great psychological depth. It starts with a section from the point of view of someone who eventually becomes a suspect, Nigel, allowing Bude to set the scene for Gwenny and her web of jealousies and secrets. After that, we turn to the mystery proper, with the scene set with a few unpleasant people and a few nondescript generic character types.

Certain aspects of it I had worked out pretty quickly, but the pieces didn’t all fit together right away, which kept me occupied for a while, but mostly I didn’t get super interested in the cast and who might be the killer, and I kind of suspected the alibi thing pretty early on. Inspector Meredith makes a tiny cameo, but it’s mostly Blampignon (who also appeared in Death on the Riviera). Meh either way, really.

This all sounds like damning with very faint praise, but it was reasonably well paced, it sowed clues and didn’t spend too much time belaboring them, and sometimes in the very predictableness of mysteries of this era there’s a sort of comfort.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Book Love

Posted April 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – Book Love

Book Love

by Debbie Tung

Genres: Graphic Novels, Non-fiction
Pages: 136
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Bookworms rejoice! These charming comics capture exactly what it feels like to be head-over-heels for hardcovers. And paperbacks! And ebooks!And bookstores! And libraries!

Book Love is a gift book of comics tailor-made for tea-sipping, spine-sniffing, book-hoarding bibliophiles. Debbie Tung's comics are humorous and instantly recognizable--making readers laugh while precisely conveying the thoughts and habits of book nerds. Book Love is the ideal gift to let a book lover know they're understood and appreciated.

Debbie Tung’s Book Love is an easy enough read which blithely presents a certain picture of what it is to love books. There are definitely pages I relate to — like the one where she’s in the middle of one book, can’t wait to start a new one, and just lets herself read the introduction… which leads to reading the whole thing.

On the other hand, I feel like she leans into a particular sort of loving books where it’s as much an aesthetic as anything, to the point of being an affectation, and one that I think has become ever more popular because of phenomena like “bookstagram”, where half the time people want books to take pictures of them (hence, probably, the page where she insists on returning a movie edition of the book, and hence definitely the page about checking out book-related social media to “inspire” you to read more).

I’m not immune from the aesthetics of books, to be clear. A flat or a house isn’t a home to me until I’ve brought my books in, and I continue to love reading dead-tree books even as I adore my sleek and comfortable ereader. I love getting new books, and I love the smell of books. But I don’t get so precious about it: I’m fine with lending books or giving books away, with reading the movie tie-in edition, with being less conscious all the time of being a person who reads, and my ereader is a constant companion even though it doesn’t look as bookish.

Sure, I knew going in that this one would be all about books, but it’s suspiciously full of bookshops, coffee shops and fairylights too, and that grates a bit.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Nick and Charlie

Posted April 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Nick and Charlie

Nick and Charlie

by Alice Oseman

Genres: Romance
Pages: 176
Series: Heartstopper
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

"CHARLIE: “I have been going out with Nick Nelson for two years. He likes rugby, Formula 1, dogs, the Marvel universe, the sound felt-tips make on paper, rain and drawing on shoes. He also likes me.”

NICK: “Things me and Charlie Spring do together include: Watch films. Sit in the same room on different laptops. Text each other from different rooms. Make out. Make food. Make drinks. Get drunk. Talk. Argue. Laugh. Maybe we're kind of boring. But that’s fine with us.”

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple – that they’re inseparable. But now Nick is leaving for university, and Charlie will be left behind at Sixth Form. Everyone’s asking if they’re staying together, which is a stupid question – they’re ‘Nick and Charlie’, for God’s sake!

But as the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie question whether their love is strong enough to survive being apart. Or are they delaying the inevitable? Because everyone knows that first loves rarely last forever
"

I wish I’d really loved this novella, Nick and Charlie, set in Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper universe and following the period just at the end of year 13 and the beginning of university for Nick. We’ve seen the foreshadowing of this in volume five of Heartstopper proper, so it felt a bit superfluous (though of course this was actually written first, I’m just speaking of the reader’s experience here) — and unfortunately switching to this format rather than the graphic novel makes it feel… well, a bit too YA for me.

I don’t know why it’s okay in the graphic novel and less so here: perhaps because we have more direct access to Nick and Charlie’s thoughts, and probably also because the conflict feels compleeeetely manufactured. It grows out of Charlie’s insecurities in a totally normal sort of way, sure, but his drunk outburst and their refusal to then communicate properly with one another doesn’t match up with the way they normally interact.

Pile on top of that the stupid coincidence of Nick’s phone supposedly being unable to receive picture messages due to being dropped even though everything else works okay (??? not the way it works), and it just feels like needless drama, manufactured so there’s even a story at all.

I really hope the final volume of Heartstopper is better than this. Charlie and Nick do need to reckon with their relationship, and what it means to be the unit that is Nick-and-Charlie… but this novella doesn’t work for me beyond some of the cute moments between them.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Spacecraft

Posted April 4, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Spacecraft

Spacecraft

by Timothy Morton

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 144
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Science fiction is filled with spacecraft. On Earth, actual rockets explode over Texas while others make their way to Mars. But what are spacecraft, and just what can they teach us about imagination, ecology, democracy, and the nature of objects? Why do certain spacecraft stand out in popular culture?

If ever there were a spacecraft that could be detached from its context, sold as toys, turned into Disney rides, parodied, and flit around in everyone's head-the Millennium Falcon would be it. Springing from this infamous Star Wars vehicle, Spacecraft takes readers on an intergalactic journey through science fiction and speculative philosophy, revealing real-world political and ecological lessons along the way. In this book Timothy Morton shows how spacecraft are never mere flights of fancy.

I really like the concept of the Object Lessons books — and it’s true that they don’t promise each book will be factual, just saying that each book is about the hidden life of an everyday thing. Nonetheless, the ones that aren’t really histories are often disappointing to me, and that’s so with Timothy Morton’s Spacecraft.

See, I’m not a big Star Wars fan. I saw the originals, and I saw the prequels, and I enjoyed them well enough, but I’ve not seen any of the more recent stuff, because I don’t watch many movies or TV shows at all and Star Wars just doesn’t draw enough enthusiasm from me. If it took me months to watch Good Omens (both the original series and then, after it came out, the second series), Star Wars has a “no hope” (see what I did there?).

This book is not about spacecraft. It’s about the Millenium Falcon, mostly, and a little bit about hyperspace, and a lot about object-orientated ontology (in which I have vanishingly little interest). I hoped I could get into it all the same, but… nope. To me, this is a waste of an option to write about what we understand about real spaceships, how they’ve impacted on our real lives.

Besides which, Morton’s narration just… went places. So many places. At seeming random. One topic would flow into another and I just couldn’t keep hold of the point.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Posted April 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

by Seanan McGuire

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 146
Series: Wayward Children #9
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.

When the school’s (literally irresistible) mean girl realizes that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, Antsy is forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.

Along the way, they will travel from a world which hides painful memories that cut as sharply as its beauty, to a land that time wasn’t yet old enough to forget—and more than one student's life will change forever.

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.

For a book that promised me dinosaurs, Seanan McGuire’s Mislaid in Parts Half-Known felt like a bit of a swizz. The dinosaur world was only a tiny part of the story, which was really the end of Antsy’s story, as begun in Lost in the Moment and Found. There are bits of other characters’ stories (a little here for Sumi, a little there for Kade, a drop for Cora), but it’s really about Antsy’s story, and a little bit about expanding the world as we know it, showing us what a nexus is and what it can do.

Honestly, it feels like we’ve got a little further from the idea of a school for children who fell into other worlds than I like? The rotating cast of characters feels like “monster of the week”, but we’re spending so little time actually at the school, and Eleanor doesn’t always appear. And I’m deeply ambivalent about Kade’s position here, always the best man and never the groom.

So I’m wondering where our questers will go next, but I also wonder if I’m tiring a bit of the formula?

Rating: 3/5

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