Tag: book reviews

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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Review – Ghosts in the Hedgerow

Posted April 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Ghosts in the Hedgerow

Ghosts in the Hedgerow

by Tom Moorhouse

Genres: Mystery, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 271
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime - and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades?

Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, the gardener ..? Who could possibly have it in for a hedgehog? In poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. And yet their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. But he can also see a solution.

Tom Moorehouse’s Ghosts in the Hedgerow tries to use the whodunnit format to interrogate what might be causing the decline in hedgehog numbers seen in the UK in recent years. It does undermine the whole premise right from the get-go by explaining that the decline is only really known anecdotally: hedgehog numbers aren’t really properly counted, and we rely on a bunch of estimates which aren’t really comparable between decades (e.g. between hunters trying to kill hedgehogs before they became a protected species, who would specifically seek them out, and now birdwatchers who may incidentally spot hedgehogs).

Nonetheless, he makes a convincing case that their numbers are declining (which I didn’t really doubt in the first place), and then trots through the suspects: road traffic, badgers, farmland bereft of hedgerows (in contrast to traditional farming), and home/garden design. None of the suspects are surprising if you’ve been at all awake to hedgehog ecology (which I have, as my parents have a hedgehog-friendly garden, and my garden is as well), and of course the final answer isn’t surprising either: it’s all of those things.

It’s a fun idea for a format, but if you’re already interested in hedgehogs, there isn’t much new here. The exact details of how hedgehogs and badgers interact were new to me, but that was about it. However, if you don’t know much about hedgehogs, other than finding them cute, then this could very well be a fun and easy way to learn more, and learn about how to make a difference to them.

To sum it up very quickly: cut holes in your fences so hedgehogs can pass through, use strimmers with caution, don’t use autonomous lawnmowers, rewild your garden, put out some supplementary food for them and a bowl of water, and try to convince other people to do the same (while writing to your MP etc etc about making changes in law). And don’t drive a car, especially not as it starts to get dark and through the night, when hedgehogs roam.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Eye of Osiris

Posted March 31, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Eye of Osiris

The Eye of Osiris

by R. Austin Freeman

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 286
Series: Dr Thorndyke #3
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

John Bellingham is a world-renowned archaeologist who goes missing mysteriously after returning from a voyage to Egypt where fabulous treasures have been uncovered. Bellingham seems to have disappeared leaving clues, which lead all those hunting down blind alleys. But when the piercing perception of the brilliant Dr Thorndyke is brought to bear on the mystery, the search begins for a man tattooed with the Eye of Osiris in this strange, tantalisingly enigmatic tale.

I haven’t read anything by R. Austin Freeman before (unless there’s a short story or two amongst the British Library Crime Classic collections), but The Eye of Osiris turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. Sometimes with classic crime fiction, it’s just kind of cosy and predictable, and that’s very enjoyable but not surprising. In many ways this was a typical mystery of the period, but The Eye of Osiris did make me think: I felt like this was a fair-play mystery, and that I had the clues I needed to figure out the end result. I got there before the main character (who is very much in the John Watson vein, including by being a doctor), but there were some aspects I wasn’t sure of.

And of course, there’s the fact that it’s related to Egyptian archaeology. It’s set in London, but the missing man whose absence is the object of investigation is an archaeologist, and his brother (Godfrey Bellingham) and niece (Ruth) are also fascinated by the subject. Ruth quickly becomes close to our protagonist, as he manufactures an excuse to help her with her work (a commission to write notes on Egyptian history to help someone who doesn’t have the time to research), and becomes fascinated with the case of her missing uncle, drawing in an old teacher of his (Thorndyke) to help.

The romance isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but I did enjoy the interplay of the characters, and that Ruth is a fully realised woman who is fascinated with her own work, and that our otherwise rather nondescript main character is in turn fascinated with her work and eager to help her. In part that’s to get close to her, of course, but he’s clearly attracted not just by her prettiness, but by her eagerness for knowledge.

In the end it’s not groundbreaking, but it was enjoyable, and I’m planning to read more of R. Austin Freeman’s mysteries, especially as some are available on Project Gutenberg.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Pill

Posted March 29, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Pill

Pill

by Robert Bennett

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 176
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

"You are what you eat." Never is this truer than when we use medications, from beta blockers and aspirin to Viagra and epidurals-and especially psychotropic pills that transform our minds as well as our bodies.

Meditating on how modern medicine increasingly measures out human identity not in T. S. Eliot's proverbial coffee spoons but in 1mg-, 5mg-, or 300mg-doses, Pill traces the uncanny presence of psychiatric pills through science, medicine, autobiography, television, cinema, literature, and popular music. Robert Bennett reveals modern psychopharmacology to be a brave new world in which human identities- thoughts, emotions, personalities, and selves themselves-are increasingly determined by the extraordinary powers of seemingly ordinary pills.

I usually enjoy the Object Lessons series, but they’re pretty varied in what they contain — the best (in my views) as the ones that act as microhistories, looking at the development of a thing, what it means to people, etc. Pill doesn’t really do so, though: it does try to explore what a particular type of pill (psychiatric medication) has meant to people, without much of the scientific/medical side of things. Largely, Bennett spends the time recounting the events of TV shows, books, etc, with a minimum of actual commentary. The character did this, then that; another character said this about it; this is how things ended.

It’s really boring to read, and it doesn’t help — for me — that Bennett’s obviously deeply ambivalent about the use of psychiatric drugs, but uses these fictional examples as if they’re truths. They aren’t. Fiction is fiction. And yes, sometimes it reflects reality and comments on reality (and medication in real life can have side effects, or not work, etc), but Bennett seems in danger of forgetting that the characters aren’t real, and their struggles aren’t real.

He reveals in the last chapter that he has bipolar disorder himself, describing some of his manic episodes, but clearly yearning for them as well. Psychiatric medication, he believes, changes his personality, mutes his creativity, etc. You can tell by reading that he’s within an ace of unprescribing himself from his own medication — and by his own admission, chaos will undoubtedly ensue if he does.

All in all, the book is more of a summary of various movies involving psychiatric conditions, followed by a confession of instability and uncertainty on the part of the author. The final chapter alone feels a lot more worthwhile than the regurgitated plots, though it’s inconclusive and perhaps not quite coherent.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – The October Faction, vol 3

Posted March 28, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The October Faction, vol 3

The October Faction

by Steve Niles, Damien Worm

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 139
Series: The October Faction #3
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Merle Cope and his frightful family have been destroyed and Fred Allan has been rescued. Now that the kids have proven themselves, the whole Allan family is back in business, ready to take on the monstrous, paranormal, and downright strange.

I’m still not really sure what to say about Steve Niles’ The October Faction — it just doesn’t get beyond “okay” for me, yet it is a little bit addictive to keep on steamrolling through the volumes. The fast pace helps: I raced through the second, third and fourth volume, reading them pretty much back to back.

There is a little bit of a development with a certain relationship here, which is kinda cute and makes a lot of sense — though there’s been a lot of rushing with the character development, this didn’t come as a surprise.

And again, the art is kinda growing on me. It makes perfect sense for the story, at any rate.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

Posted March 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

by Heather Fawcett

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 337
Series: Emily Wilde #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late, in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her infuriatingly charming fellow scholar Wendell Bambleby.

Because Bambleby is more than brilliant and unbearably handsome. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers.

She also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by his mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby’s realm and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.

But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors and of her own heart.

After finishing the first book in this series, I was eager to grab Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, by Heather Fawcett. I still dispute that it can be considered “cosy”, but it was a really fun read and one which my brain needed at the time. It still bears comparison with the Isabella Trent books by Marie Brennan, but mostly because the two women are both scholars and have some similarities in that. Emily Wilde is very much her own woman, even if she shares Isabella’s “deranged practicality”, and Wendell too is a delight, as are the glimpses of the Fae world — capricious, illogical and often vicious as it is.

The story features a new location, of course, taking them far from Cambridge once more to encounter new faerie. Two new major players join the cast as well: Farris Rose, another scholar (who isn’t on great terms with either of them), and Ariadne, who is Emily’s niece. That adds some interesting new tensions, now that Wendell and Emily’s relationship has firmed up a bit and become less adversarial. And of course, I continue to really enjoy Emily’s fascination with the Fae, and her willingness to do hare-brained things in the pursuit of knowledge — and ultimately, now, for Wendell.

Sometimes the journal format breaks down a little bit as a narrative method, but it is managed very gamely for the most part. I particularly liked that it snuck a little surprise on us through Emily’s fragmented, troubled memories while she’s in the court.

…More, please?

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Britannia, vol 1

Posted March 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Britannia, vol 1

Britannia

by Peter Milligan, Juan José Ryp, Jordie Bellaire

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 112
Series: Britannia #1
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

On the fringes of civilization, the world's first detective is about to make an unholy discovery...

Ruled by the Fates. Manipulated by the Gods. Commanded by Caesar. In the year 65 A.D., one's destiny was not his own. At the height of Nero's reign, a veteran of Rome's imperial war machine has been dispatched to the farthest reaches of the colonies to investigate unnatural happenings... In the remote outpost of Britannia, Antonius Axia – the First Detective – will become Rome's only hope to reassert control over the empire's most barbaric frontier... and keep the monsters that bridge the line between myth and mystery at bay...

I’m not entirely sure what to make of some of the very positive reviews of Britannia. I really didn’t get along with it, but I guess it’s a matter of taste. Personally, I found that it was very heavy on male-gazey stuff (did we really need to see multiple terrified naked or near-naked women? methinks someone’s kink is on show), and while the art tells the story well, it wasn’t a style I really enjoyed, and sometimes I had trouble telling the characters apart.

As far as the plot goes… well. I’m very eyebrow-raise-y about the concept of the Vestal Virgins having a special codex that mostly teaches you how to be Sherlock Holmes (but has maybe a few magical effects as well? hard to tell how seriously to take those screens and whether there’s some metaphors going on there). Referring to Antonius as the “detectioner” just… cringe. I cringed deep in my soul.

And it didn’t feel totally coherent, to be honest. What is Orkus exactly? How are the different manifestations related? Obviously these are questions that might well be answered in later volumes, but I just wasn’t sure of the ground we’re starting from.

Overall, there are some bits here that could’ve been intriguing, but in the end, not for me. I won’t continue reading the series.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – The Walnut Tree

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

Review – The Walnut Tree

The Walnut Tree - Women, Violence and the Law: A Hidden History

by Kate Morgan

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 319
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they'll be.'

So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of Parliament in 1853. His words - intended ironically in a debate about a rise in attacks on women - summed up the prevailing attitude of the day, in which violence against women was waved away as a part and parcel of modern living - a chilling seam of misogyny that had polluted both parliament and the law. But were things about to change?

In this vivid and essential work of historical non-fiction, Kate Morgan explores the legal campaigns, test cases and individual injustices of the Victorian and Edwardian eras which fundamentally re-shaped the status of women under British law. These are seen through the untold stories of women whose cases became cornerstones of our modern legal system and shine a light on the historical inequalities of the law.

We hear of the uniquely abusive marriage which culminated in the dramatic story of the 'Clitheroe wife abduction'; of the domestic tragedies which changed the law on domestic violence; the controversies surrounding the Contagious Diseases Act and the women who campaigned to abolish it; and the real courtroom stories behind notorious murder cases such as the 'Camden Town Murder'.

Exploring the 19th- and early 20th Century legal history that influenced the modern-day stances on issues such as domestic abuse, sexual violence and divorce, The Walnut Treelifts the lid on the shocking history of women under British law - and what it means for women today.

Having loved Kate Morgan’s book on the laws surrounding murder, I was prepared to quite enjoy The Walnut Tree — though, being a history of the rights of women through discussing the laws and legal cases that shaped them, it was bound to be pretty grim in some ways. And of course it was: it’s not easy (and nor should it be) to read about the way men used to be allowed to abuse women and deprive them of liberty, and how women were faulted for all kinds of things in order that people shouldn’t have to convict the men in their lives of anything.

Still, Morgan tells the story through well-chosen cases that illustrate a lot of the anxieties and questions in people’s minds at the time, and she manages to bring it all to life in a way that I (at least) find very readable and enjoyable. She has a knack for settings things out clearly and engagingly, and I enjoy this tactic of taking a legal-eye view of things.

That said, of course (as I mentioned), it does discuss some horrible cases and some very unfortunate women — abused, kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered. It’s saddening and infuriating, and sometimes it’s worse to think about the fact that some of these excuses and attitudes can still be found today. “She was asking for it”, “it was a crime of passion”, “she owed me”…

Not a comfortable read, but one that I found fascinating.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Big Ben Strikes Eleven

Posted March 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Big Ben Strikes Eleven

Big Ben Strikes Eleven

by David Magarshack

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 333
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

The discovery of Sir Robert Boniface’s body on the floor of his blue limousine was made quite accidentally on a sultry Friday evening towards the end of June.

The industrial and financial tycoon, and former stalwart of the British Cabinet, had been shot in the head and left in the quiet Vale of Health alongside London’s Hampstead Heath. Nearby, a rejected portrait of Sir Robert is found riddled with bullets in the studio of the now- missing romantic artist Matt Caldwell. As it hurtles towards its feverish denouement under the bells of the capital’s most famous clock, this closely observed and stylish study of both character and motive transports the reader from the Stock Exchange to Scotland Yard. It asks the question of what it means to be crooked and how immense power corrupts.

I found David Magarshack’s Big Ben Strikes Eleven a bit disappointing vs the way it was described (as being for grownups, and apparently earning Dorothy L. Sayers’ praise). It sounded like it was maybe going to be a bit more literary, but it felt fairly by-the-numbers police procedural ish, with each clue and hint dragged out of the supporting cast.

It felt like the basic facts got recapitulated — along with needless baroque levels of speculation — every chapter or so, without getting much further forward, while there was a strangely laissez-faire attitude to getting the various witnesses to explain themselves. He won’t explain where he was? Oh well. She won’t give information because she says it’s a privacy thing? Fine, that’s fine. What?!

There are some interesting bits, like unpicking a certain alibi, though there’s a certain reliance on coincidence and a whole bizarre interlude with a love story that feels self-destructive and not at all appealing. Sure, one of the suspects is involved, but it added relatively little (just a slight potential explanation of a clue we already had), and just felt weird.

So… not what I hoped for, alas.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Lost in the Moment and Found

Posted March 18, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Lost in the Moment and Found

Lost in the Moment and Found

by Seanan McGuire

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 208
Series: Wayward Children #8
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.

If you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood... it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.

And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it….

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.

And stepping through those doors exacts a price.

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.

Picking up Seanan McGuire’s Lost in the Moment and Found, I wasn’t sure whether I’d love it. On paper, this series has so much that I love, but it goes some dark places at times, and the warning about the situation that Antsy ends up in made me wonder if this was going to be another one which cut too close to home.

For me, it wasn’t, but it’s worth knowing that Antsy ends up in a difficult situation where her step-father convinces her that her mother won’t believe her if she says anything against him, while making her feel deeply uncomfortable (and also involving an obvious threat of child sexual abuse). In addition, Antsy loses her father very young. So it’s important to know that going in, for some people; as McGuire’s initial note says, Antsy runs before the bad things really start happening, though.

There is a fair bit about that and the build-up to why Antsy runs away, and as such I suppose I’d be happy if the book spent a bit more time in the shop. It sounds like a fascinating world and I wanted Antsy to explore it a little more, and to explore some of the other worlds with her. Instead we turn to the price she’s paying for the joy — and as ever, it’s a harsh one.

Obviously, the end of the book tells us where the main plot thread that runs through the odd-numbered novellas is going next, or at least, that Antsy’s going to have something to do with it. Given that she brings a bit of fresh blood into the questing group, that could be interesting!

Rating: 4/5

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