Tag: book reviews

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

Posted April 9, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

A Pirate's Life for Tea

by Rebecca Thorne

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Series: Tomes and Tea #2
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

While searching for stolen dragon eggs, newly engaged couple Kianthe and Reyna find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a swashbuckling love story.

On one side is Serina, a failed farmer turned river pirate. Her booty? Wheat, grains, and the occasional jar of imported tea leaves. It's quite the embarrassment to Diarn Arlon, the powerful lord of the Nacean River, and he'll conscript anyone to bring her to justice. Especially Kianthe, the elemental mage who just crashed his party, and her somewhat-scary fiancée.

Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of Arlon's constables--who happens to be Serina's childhood friend. Bobbie is determined to capture the pirate before anyone else, but it would be a lot easier if Serina didn't absolutely loathe her now.

As Kianthe and Reyna watch this relation-shipwreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that these disaster lesbians need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna's favorite past time. The dragon eggs may have to wait.

A Pirate’s Life for Tea is the second in Rebecca Thorne’s series about Reyna and Kianthe, and… it might be the last one I read. I get how the adventure and romance of it will interest people, but something just isn’t clicking for me — it feels so terribly young, and I’m not saying that because I think it’s aimed at being cosy, but because the interactions between the characters don’t feel particularly grown up (even as they’re having sex).

The fantasy world it’s set in also fails to feel quite fleshed out: it felt a bit like in a video game, where as you progress, bits of the map get revealed — only I’m not sure the map’s there to be revealed until Kianthe and Reyna go there. (I don’t just mean the actual literal map, either, I mean the cultures and broad strokes of what’s out there for them to find.)

Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s all planned already, but I just didn’t feel it in reading the book.

Anyway, I can see how it would be a lot of fun for others, but it’s not my cup of tea (I don’t even like tea, so that’s not too surprising). I might read more in the future, maybe if I need something easy and morally simple to read, but not when I have so much else on my TBR that sounds tempting.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 5

Posted April 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 5

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

by Misaki, Momochi, Sando

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 210
Series: A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When Lizel mysteriously finds himself in a city that bears odd similarities to his own but clearly isn't, he quickly comes to terms with the unlikely truth: this is an entirely different world. Even so, laid-back Lizel isn't the type to panic. He immediately sets out to learn more about this strange place, and to help him do so, hires a seasoned adventurer named Gil as his tour guide and protector.

Until he's able to find a way home, Lizel figures this is a perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life adventuring as part of a guild. After all, he's sure he'll go home eventually... might as well enjoy the otherworldly vacation for now!

Volume five of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation features Eleven properly joining the party, wooo! We also see a bit more of Viscount Ray — and watch Lizel shamelessly manipulating matters to get what he wants.

I’m still deeply amused by people insisting this series isn’t a romance, because it really comes across like protesting too much when you have Eleven leaning across to cup and gently stroke Lizel’s cheek while asking to stay at his side. Like sure, this isn’t a kissing book, but Gil and Eleven (and plenty of others) are deeply drawn to Lizel, and it ends up coming across as preeeetty weird to keep insisting “no homo”.

I mean, maybe lots of people platonically gently stroke non-family members’ hair/cheeks and beg to stay at their side, but it’s pretty romance-coded, let’s be honest about this now.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Posted April 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea

Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea

by Ian Dunt, Dorian Lynskey

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Origin Stories #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes people believe in conspiracy theories? Why have they taken over our political sphere? And how do we counter them before it’s too late?

The world has always had conspiracy theories. From the Illuminati to the deep state, the JFK assassination to the death of Princess Diana – there have always been those who believe that events are manipulated by shadowy forces with sinister intent. But in recent years, conspiracism has colonised the mainstream. These days, it is a booming industry, a political strategy and a pseudo-religion – and it’s threatening the foundations of liberal democracy.

Where once political battles were fought over ideas and values, it now feels as though we’re arguing over the nature of reality itself. The problem is bigger than lizard people or UFOs: left unchecked, conspiracy theories have the power to warp the fabric of society and justify unspeakable crimes.

In Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pull back the curtain on conspiracy theories: where they come from, who promotes them, how they work and what they’re doing to us. From biblical myth to online hysteria, this book explains what happens when the human gift for storytelling goes wrong – and how we might restore our common reality.

If you’ve already read about conspiracy theories much before, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s Conspiracy Theory doesn’t offer a lot that’s new. They try to tackle the history of conspiracy theories, the psychology of why we believe them, and also what can be done about them, which is a big ask in a small space.

The history manages to be reasonable thorough, or that’s my impression: I only vaguely knew about the original actual Illuminati, and there were aspects of historical USian conspiracy stuff that I didn’t know a lot about. It discusses Kennedy’s assassination, of course, but also more recent stuff like Pizzagate: it’s definitely modern and relevant, though feels slightly weird that it doesn’t address Trump’s new presidency and what that might mean for conspiracy theories (which is not the book’s fault, to be clear — it was released only just after the US election).

In a way, that fact makes the book feel defeated right away once we get onto the stuff about what to do about conspiracy theories, to be honest. How can one focus on deplatforming people who spout conspiracy theories when Trump’s about to be president again? [Not to mention everything that’s happening at the time of this review’s posting — it was originally written in January.] The chapter on defanging conspiracy theories is also quite short, because I think if that was the problem you want to solve… you wouldn’t want to start from here.

Ultimately, it was interesting but didn’t really add much for me. Rob Brotherton’s Suspicious Minds (which the authors reference) is better and more in depth.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Ten Teacups

Posted April 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Ten Teacups

The Ten Teacups

by Carter Dickson, John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

"There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested."

Writing as Carter Dickson, the master of the locked room mystery John Dickson Carr returns to the Crime Classics series, pitching his series amateur detective Henry Merrivale against a seemingly watertight mystery: after the police are sent a note warning them about a forthcoming crime, a man is shot in a room on the top floor of a Kensington townhouse – a house watched from all sides during the murder. Surely nobody could have gotten in or out? And yet the man is dead, and just like the last time the police received a note like this, there are ten teacups set out at the scene of the crime. H.M. is drawn to unravel this bizarre crime, as the mysterious significance of the ten teacups in murders past and present pushes the police to their limits.

Carter Dickson (AKA John Dickson Carr) was one of the masters of “impossible mysteries”, and to some extent your enjoyment of his work will depend on much you enjoy that genre. I’m not a huge fan, and I previously found Carr’s work frustrating, so even though I’ve come round to some appreciation of it, I found The Ten Teacups a bit frustrating.

The thing that gets me is that they’re always so contrived, with such tight constraints for them to function properly. And this book posits not just one impossible crime, but two. I won’t go too much into the details, but it really requires so much fine-tuning of murder that it always feels artificial to me. I did like the practice of footnoting back the pages where you can find the clues, though — or at least, I found it interesting as a convention.

There is one really macabre moment when you realise that someone has made a corpse into a chair to hide it, and is sitting on the corpse. Just. Yipes. There’s some genuine atmosphere in that portion of the story.

On another note, I found the portrayal of the Welsh character a little discomforting. Perhaps the aspect of him being wild/savage/atavistic wasn’t meant to be correlated with his Welshness, but I suspect it was, and that’s… just weird and unpleasant in a book from 1937. You’d have thought the Welsh would be seen as properly human by then, surely.

Not a favourite of Carr’s work for me, for sure, though your mileage is likely to vary: apparently this is regularly voted one of the best impossible mysteries of all time!

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Apothecary Diaries (LN), vol 2

The Apothecary Diaries

by Natsu Hyuuga, Touko Shino

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels
Pages: 297
Series: The Apothecary Diaries (LN) #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A palace servant trained in herbal medicine finds herself in the heart of imperial intrigue in this enthralling period mystery!

Dismissed from the rear palace, Maomao returns to service in the outer court--as the personal serving woman to none other than Jinshi! That doesn't necessarily make her popular with the other ladies, but a bit of jealousy might be the least of her problems. A mysterious warehouse fire, an official with a very bad case of food poisoning, and the mysterious last will and testament of a deceased craftsman all demand her attention--but are these cases really separate, or do they share a troubling connection? Then there's the mysterious military man who continually visits Jinshi. He's strange, maybe even a little twisted...and he seems very interested in Maomao.

I probably shouldn’t have left it this long to review volume two of Natsu Hyuuga’s The Apothecary Diaries, but it’s one I really enjoyed, so I don’t want to be quiet about it even if my impressions aren’t so fresh! Maomao remains a really fun character: deeply practical in a way that comes across as a bit deranged. (Actually, that’s a thing I really like in characters in general — think Emily Wilde and Isabella Trent, too! Hmmmmm.) I love that Jinshi is fascinated by her and she just totally stonewalls his interest; I really wonder if this is meant to be a will-they-or-won’t-they or whether she’ll always say no to him. I feel like I want the latter, in some ways, but I’m already starting to feel sorry for Jinshi!

I do wish that we saw a bit more of Jinshi’s cleverness too, because at times it feels like Maomao’s the only competent one in the whole court, at least as far as solving these mysteries go. Sometimes that’s because she’s the only one with the knowledge of poisons, but still…

This volume does also dig a little bit into Maomao’s origins, and ouch. I wonder whether more will happen with that, or if this kind of wrapped it up? There are so many volumes to come, and I’m not sure yet what the ongoing threads might be, other than Jinshi’s fascination with Maomao.

I find these light novels really compulsive reading, super quick reads with total absorption, which is a nice feeling. And I kind of want to read the manga at about the same pace, so I have a few volumes of that to catch up with!

Looking forward to reading the next volume of the light novel soon, in any case.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

Posted April 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol 4

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

by Misaki, Momochi, Sando

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 200
Series: A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation #4
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When Lizel mysteriously finds himself in a city that bears odd similarities to his own but clearly isn't, he quickly comes to terms with the unlikely truth: this is an entirely different world. Even so, laid-back Lizel isn't the type to panic. He immediately sets out to learn more about this strange place, and to help him do so, hires a seasoned adventurer named Gil as his tour guide and protector.

Until he's able to find a way home, Lizel figures this is a perfect opportunity to explore a new way of life adventuring as part of a guild. After all, he's sure he'll go home eventually... might as well enjoy the otherworldly vacation for now!

In the fourth volume of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, the bandit plot continues, and the red-haired adventurer who has been interested in joining them before gets a bit more serious, introducing himself as Eleven. His antics give us a more serious side of Lizel — seriously, don’t get on his bad side — which is intriguing. It’s my understanding that the light novel makes it clear that Lizel’s actively manipulating people around him, which is implied several times in the manga, but perhaps less explicit: this time makes it pretty clear.

The Gil/Lizel vibes take slightly more of a back seat to Lizel/Eleven vibes, but there’s still a sense that Gil is the only one Lizel considers an equal, the only one he allows to see all sides of him.

It’s more and more obvious that there are barely any women in the series, which is a bit eyebrow-raising, but I still love the art and the dynamic between Gil and Lizel.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Posted April 2, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Black Ops and Beaver Bombing

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

by Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 267
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

From seals' frisky behaviour to red squirrels making their last stand in the battle against the greys, here are the mammals of Britain as you’ve never seen them before.

Join Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall on an overnight stakeout in search of the elusive pine marten. Follow them down mines inhabited by greater horseshoe bats, cavers, ravers and teenagers smoking unusual substances. Meet water voles thriving in the East End of Glasgow – despite the lack of water – and observe the brilliance of wild boar in your back garden.

Lively and light-hearted, Black Ops and Beaver Bombing puts animals at the heart of the story, revelling in their peculiarities, with a few corny jokes along the way. In search of answers to the problems that beset our wildlife, Fiona and Tim reveal the wonder of creatures that are worth fighting for.

Black Ops & Beaver Bombing is by a husband-and-wife pair, Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, and it introduces and discusses various of Britain’s wild mammals, scientific engagement with them, and attempts to experience them in the wild. It discusses stuff like rewilding (hence beaver bombing), and the success or not thereof, and also of culling (such as red squirrel culling), and definitely provides some interesting insights.

I think partly the personal touch didn’t work for me a lot; I didn’t care if they managed to see beavers or not, I was here for the science. That’s a failing of a lot of pop-science books, admittedly, and not unique to this. But somehow the chapters really did drag.

All the same, there was a lot of interesting information — I found myself telling my dad various things about voles, since he has an affection for them — and updates on stuff I sort of knew from bits of the news, but had never looked into in detail. The title is probably the snappiest thing about it, though, and much of the content is fairly sobering: we really do fail our wild mammals, here in Britain.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Posted March 31, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Soda and Fizzy Drinks

Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History

by Judith Levin

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 184
Series: Edible
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

More than eighty years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking arguments remarkably similar to those they prompt today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally, or nutritionally good or bad? Seemingly since their invention, they have been loved—and hated—for being cold or sweet or fizzy or stimulating. Many of their flavors are international: lemon and ginger were more popular than cola until about 1920. Some are local: tarragon in Russia, cucumber in New York, red bean in Japan, and chinotto (exceedingly bitter orange) in Italy. This book looks not only at how something made from water, sugar, and soda became big business, but also how it became deeply important to people—for fizzy drinks’ symbolic meanings are far more complex than the water, gas, and sugar from which they are made.

Judith Levin’s Soda and Fizzy Drinks is another entry in the “Edible” series, all global histories of particular food items. Levin discusses the development of fizzy drinks and also their modern popularity, what they mean to people, and why they keep coming out with weird seasonal flavours (basically, to grab people’s attention and keep up demand, which isn’t a surprise).

I was surprised to learn about flavours of soda like celery, turkey and gravy, etc, and not surprised by much else such as the history of Coca-Cola and various reactions to Coca-Cola like Inca Cola. I was surprised that (according to Levin) Coca-Cola is viewed as pretty much holy by the Maya people. (Mostly so far in my external reading inspired by this book I’ve found sources discussing it as a part of diet in Mexico, and discussing changes brought by “coca-colonisation”, but less about it actually being a part of religious ceremonies.)

As usual with this series, the book is illustrated (sometimes making reference to the images and sometimes not really), and has a bunch of recipes in the back.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Seams Like Murder

Posted March 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Seams Like Murder

Seams Like Murder

by Tilly Wallace

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 234
Series: Grace Designs Mysteries #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

There are two things that can’t talk—moving pictures and dead showgirls…

1920, Wellington, New Zealand. Grace Devine is poised to build her thriving dress design business as the twenties begin to soar. But when a fashionable client is murdered, suspicion falls on Grace as the last person to see Agatha alive.

As wary clients cancel and business begins to fail, Grace decides there’s only one way to prove her innocence and save her career…this seamstress will turn sleuth to find who really murdered the showgirl.

The more she learns, the more she uncovers of the darker side of the dead woman’s personality. Agatha liked to collect secrets and use them against people. But what target snapped that fatal night? Can Grace stitch together the clues before her life is torn apart…

These heart-warming historical mysteries will send you on a unique New Zealand adventure.

Tilly Wallace’s Seams Like Murder is a short, quick read, set in New Zealand post-WWI. Grace is trying to set up her own fashion house, starting small, and hampered by being a single mother with a “husband” who died in the war (and, the subtext suggests, because she wasn’t actually married to him at all, though I don’t think that’s confirmed in so many words in this book). She has a strong support network, though, with a mentor, a close friend who lives nearby, her father, a cousin, and her husband’s brother — and this was an aspect of the story I rather enjoyed, since they each supported her in their own way.

The mystery itself is relatively obvious, and works out in a relatively obvious way. There’s a hint that there’s potentially to be a romance with the “dishy” detective, which leaves me pretty cold: there’s some genuine chemistry between Grace and her husband’s brother, in a complicated way, and that’s what we actually see any build-up for at all. There are other books in the series, so I guess any further development with the detective happens there, but I’m not super inclined at this moment to follow.

I should note as well that there’s a fantasy element to the story, totally not discussed in the cover copy: Grace has the ability to touch someone and pick up memories that they’re thinking about at the time. The constraints of the gift are fairly undefined in this book, and I find it a bit odd that this element is played down so much in the copy. Seems like a good way to annoy one audience (the historical mystery fans) and miss another completely (the fantasy mystery fans).

In any case, as I mentioned, I’m not really inclined to read more of this series. This book was entertaining enough that I didn’t think about stopping it, and I did enjoy Grace’s family and support network, which felt genuine and warm. There’s nothing that makes me feel it’s going to go in a direction I’m particularly interested in, but I might read a second book if I run across it in a subscription service I use like Kobo Plus or something (I see the first book is available in Kobo Plus in the US at least, after all), and I want something light. It’s not that I disliked it or anything, it just didn’t click with me in the way I hoped.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Bloodless Princes

Posted March 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Bloodless Princes

The Bloodless Princes

by Charlotte Bond

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 151
Series: The Fireborne Blade #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A tale of death, honor and true love's embrace. Come for the journey through the underworld. Stay for the minacious dragon-cat.

It seemed the afterlife was bustling.

Cursed by the previous High Mage, and following an...incident...with a supremely powerful dragon, newly-promoted High Mage Saralene visits the afterlife with a boon to beg of the Bloodless Princes who run the underworld.

But Saralene and her most trusted advisor/champion/companion, Sir Maddileh, will soon discover that there’s only so much research to be done by studying the old tales, though perhaps there’s enough truth in them to make a start.

Saralene will need more than just her wits to leave the underworld, alive. And Maddileh will need more than just her Fireborne Blade.

A story of love and respect that endures beyond death. And of dragons, because we all love a dragon!

Charlotte Bond’s The Bloodless Princes is a pretty immediate follow-up to The Fireborne Blade, so definitely start by reading that. It took me a little bit to get myself back into the world and characters, especially as I experienced the end of the first book as being rather dark and ambiguous, and all signs point here to Bond not… having intended that, and thinking of Maddileh and Saralene as unambiguously “good guys”, totally justified in what they did, without any hint of darkness about it. But… sorry, no matter how awful someone has been, using weird dragon/blood magic to take over their body and thus kill them isn’t morally neutral.

Once I got past that dissonance, it was still a fun enough read, but I wasn’t expecting as much from it, since it kind of retroactively edited The Fireborne Blade to be more straightforwardly heroic than I’d originally thought it. Maddileh and Saralene become a romance plot with more than a hint of Orpheus and Eurydice, and it’s kind of predictable. There’s some fun lore, and it’s nice to understand more about the dragons and how they view their relationship with humans.

It ticks along at a good pace, and I enjoyed it for what it was, but depending on how you felt about The Fireborne Blade other than “ooh, female knight! girl power!”, it might be rather disappointing.

Rating: 3/5

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