Tag: book reviews

Review – Beneath Our Feet

Posted August 21, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Beneath Our Feet

Beneath Our Feet

by Michael Lewis, Ian Richardson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Britain has a rich past, with incredible archaeology. Every day, new discoveries transform our understanding of its history. Most are made not by professional archaeologists, but by ordinary members of the public. Some are chance finds; others are recovered by the thousands of fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and metal detectorists who scour Britain's countryside and waterways looking for artifacts and coins.

Beneath Our Feet is a celebration of this growing public involvement in archaeology, and of the groundbreaking work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme managed by the British Museum in England and Amgueddfa Cymru in Wales. Its mission is collaboration with public finders, encouraging them to report their discoveries so they can be recorded on a national database and shared with archaeologists, historians, and everyone with an interest in the past buried beneath our feet.

From the 3,500-year-old Ringlemere Cup to the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, a heart pendant connected to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and a jar of American gold coins buried by a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, these are the stories of more than fifty astonishing treasures, the people who found them, and how they are reshaping British history.

Beneath Our Feet is by Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson, but it covers the finds of many ordinary people — not archaeologists, but metal detectorists, fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and people who just chanced across their finds. In the UK there’s a system to get such things declared and recorded in order that museums can acquire them for display and study, which is great, and here the authors show off some of these items.

It’s a fully illustrated book with colourful, non-glossy pages, some of which are the items themselves and some just images that cast some light on them. I could’ve done with more sense of scale on some of the items, but for a few they do show the scale and the comparisons. Each object or set of objects gets discussed quite briefly, within a couple of pages, and a note about where it can be found now (e.g. a museum or a private collection), so it’s more of a taster than anything.

I really liked it — as a kid who grew up watching and loving Time Team, this kind of “everyday archaeology” (though some of the objects found are in fact officially Treasure and incredibly opulent) is incredibly fun to read about. And it’s a really well-presented book.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Most Delicious Poison

Posted August 20, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Most Delicious Poison

Most Delicious Poison: From Spices to Vices - The Story of Nature's Toxins

by Noah Whiteman

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A deadly secret lurks within our kitchens, medicine cabinets and gardens...

Digitalis purpurea. The common foxglove. Vision blurs as blood pressure drops precipitously. The heartbeat slows until, finally, it stops.

Atropa belladonna. Deadly nightshade. Eyes darken as strange shapes flutter across your vision. The heart begins to race and soon the entire body is overcome with convulsions.

Papaver somniferum. The opium poppy. Pupils constrict to a pinprick as the senses dull. Gradually, breathing shudders to a halt.

Scratch the surface of a coffee bean, a chilli flake or an apple seed and find a bevy of strange chemicals - biological weapons in a war raging unseen. Here, beetles, birds, bats and butterflies must navigate a minefield of specialised chemicals and biotoxins, each designed to maim and kill.

And yet these chemicals, evolved to repel marauding insects and animals, have now become an integral part of our everyday lives. Some we use to greet our days (caffeine) and titillate our tongues (capsaicin), others to bend our minds (psilocybin) and take away our pains (opioids).

Inspired by his father's love of the natural world and his eventual spiral into the depths of addiction, evolutionary biologist Noah Whiteman explores how we came to use - and abuse - these chemicals. Delving into the mysterious origins of plant and fungal toxins, and their unique human history, Most Delicious Poison provides a kaleidoscopic tour of nature's most delectable and dangerous poisons.

Noah Whiteman’s Most Delicious Poison: From Spices to Vices – the Story of Nature’s Toxins is primarily focused on the issue of addiction, and includes discussion of his father’s alcoholism and death due to complications thereof. It muses on his own likely propensity toward addiction as well, and generally seems to be part an exorcism of Whiteman’s own demons around addictive plant products.

There is a great deal of discussion of chemistry and biology as well, discussing how exactly the toxins work, and how they interact with receptors — and even how that might have evolved (often coincidentally, but sometimes based on the fact that some things are widespread across the animal kingdom, having evolved early on). It was this that I was interested on, and it largely didn’t disappoint, though I felt the emphasis on addiction meant a bit of a narrowed focus beyond some other plant toxins that would’ve been interesting. Basically everything came down to addiction within a few pages, and I don’t think that emphasis was really clear in the book’s description.

I did also find Whiteman’s style a bit challenging, rather inclined to jump around/link together topics that aren’t closely linked in a very “and another thing!” manner.

Overall, not quite what I hoped for.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Undetectables

Posted August 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Undetectables

The Undetectables

by Courtney Smyth

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 442
Series: The Undetectables #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Be gay, solve crime, take naps—A witty and quirky fantasy murder mystery in a folkloric world of witches, faeires, vampires, trolls and ghosts, for fans of Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and T. J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door.

A magical serial killer is stalking the Occult town of Wrackton. Hypnotic whistling causes victims to chew their own tongues off, leading to the killer being dubbed the Whistler (original, right?). But outside the lack of taste buds and the strange magical carvings on the victims’ torsos, the murderer leaves no evidence. No obvious clues. No reason – or so it seems.

Enter the Undetectables, a detective agency run by three witches and a ghost in a cat costume (don’t ask). They are hired to investigate the murders, but with their only case so far left unsolved, will they be up to the task? Mallory, the forensic science expert, is struggling with pain and fatigue from her recently diagnosed fibromyalgia. Cornelia, the team member most likely to go rogue and punch a police officer, is suddenly stirring all sorts of feelings in Mallory. Diana, the social butterfly of the group, is hitting up all of her ex-girlfriends for information. And not forgetting ghostly Theodore – deceased, dramatic, and also the agency’s first dead body and unsolved murder case.

With bodies stacking up and the case leading them to mysteries at the very heart of magical society, can the Undetectables find the Whistler before they become the killer’s next victims?

In the end, Courtney Smyth’s The Undetectables didn’t really prove to be my thing. I loved the tagline (“be gay, solve crimes, take naps”), and I loved the fact that Mallory has a serious and potentially limiting disability, which is never ignored in the course of the story even when she has to do heroics. I don’t know from experience whether her fibro was portrayed accurately, but I appreciated the inclusion — along with the various flavours of queerness, too.

However, it just felt a bit… lacklustre? Obviously, because I’m a mystery fan, the mystery element was pretty important to me, and it felt like the girls kept missing really obvious clues — and then I hated the villain monologue section, with all the super-manufactured clues. The narrative lampshaded that a bit, in that Mallory very much thinks the puzzles are stupid, but… ugh, so many pages taken up with that.

And then there was just a certain immaturity to the relationships. In a way it makes sense for the main character, who has felt left behind by the others, but it wasn’t just that. Cornelia’s relationship with Beckett is transparently bad. Not that older people don’t get into bad relationships, or that it’s about maturity or intelligence exactly, it’s just… not the kind of situation I enjoy reading about, and makes me feel like I’m back in school.

I did like the relationship between the three girls, and the deep friendship between Theodore and Mallory. There were definitely good elements. But I finished it and thought… I’m not sure that was a good use of my time.

I am sure, however, that it is the perfect read for many people! I mean, look at that tagline.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 16

Posted August 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 16

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 162
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #16
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Nobuko and Hiroki's long-distance relationship has hit a bit of a rocky patch. Hiroki is plagued by his own anxieties, but still rushes to Nobuko's side when he senses something is amiss. But when they finally meet, she has an unusual request to make of him... How will their relationship change as they try to focus on life beyond love?

Volume 16 of Akane Tamura’s is the last one I hadn’t reviewed fully, and now I’m almost at the end of the series so far in my reread! Boo. It’s another really cute volume, even though Hiroki is struggling with feeling jealous and Nobuko is still finding her way with new friends and coworkers. I love how Hiroki and Nobuko communicate and work things out, and how Nobuko resolves herself to do better — for Hiroki and also by apologising to Asuka.

The side characters are really quite prominent over the next few volumes, with Hiroki so far away, and I don’t always love that because I’m here for Hiroki and Nobuko. Still, Asuka’s love for Tai is cute, as is Aoike and Shiotani’s friendship.

Honestly it’s all a pretty realistic portrayal of young adulthood, made interesting by the fact that Hiroki and Nobuko are sweet and determined to make their relationship work, unwilling to let lack of communication hinder anything. You can really root for them.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Judas Window

Posted August 17, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Judas Window

The Judas Window

by John Dickson Carr, Carter Dickson

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 269
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Avory Hume is found stabbed to death with an arrow - in a study with bolted steel shutters and a heavy door locked from the inside. In the same room James Caplon Answell lies unconscious, his clothes disordered as though from a struggle, his fingerprints on the damning arrow.

Here is the unique Carter Dickson "impossible situation" - yet the great, explosive Sir Henry Merrivale gets down to serious sleuthing and at last startles the crowd in the Old Bailey with a reconstruction of the crime along logical, convincing lines.

H.M. in his most exciting case - an original, unconventional mystery, with a rich story background and a thrilling trial scene.

Every time the British Library Crime Classics series republish one of John Dickson Carr’s mysteries (under that name or as Carter Dickson), the intro hyperbolically refers to it as one of the greatest locked room mysteries ever, etc etc. The Judas Window was a genuinely fun one though, with one of the least goofy explanations of how the locked room wasn’t actually impenetrable, and it’s one of the books in John Dickson Carr’s oeuvre that I got on with best so far (not always having been much of a fan).

It certainly helps that much of it is courtroom drama, with the larger-than-life H.M. defending the prisoner in court, with a few sensations along the way. The character of Mary Hume is pretty amazing, and a rare one in crime fiction: having allowed a lover to take erotic photos of her and then been blackmailed about them, she comes out in court to take all the power out of it by forthrightly admitting the whole thing. I feel like this doesn’t get as much spotlight as it deserves in the story, because it’s a heck of a power play.

The puzzle works out nicely, with my only quibble being that I didn’t think the actual culprit made a lot of sense without some more clues or build-up. But that wasn’t so much the point of the story, I think, so it wasn’t a huge downside. Overall, I really liked this one.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Underwear: Fashion in Detail

Posted August 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Underwear: Fashion in Detail

Underwear: Fashion in Detail

by Eleri Lynn

Genres: Fashion, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 224
Series: Fashion in Detail
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Get intimately acquainted with the V&A's world-renowned collection of undergarments in this eye-opening visual history. From camisoles to corsets, basques to boudoir caps, Underwear: Fashion in Detail traces the peculiar evolution of underwear. Revealing photographs highlight close-up details in the garments, while intricate line drawings show their masterly construction. A wide range of designs is represented, from rare 16th-century examples to Dior's curvaceous New Look, to Calvin Klein's notorious briefs.

Underwear: Fashion in Detail is another of the books from the V&A delving into a particular topic through their collections, this one written by Eleri Lynn. I found it a little less easy to read than the others, with text arranged in columns rather than going smoothly across the page, and it doesn’t provide full images of many of the items discussed. Just seeing the detail without seeing how it fits into the whole is pretty unedifying, to be honest.

There’s a lot of information here, and someone with a better visual imagination might find it more useful for envisaging the whole thing, but I was a bit disappointed in the presentation.

Still, if it’s a topic you have interest in, it’s worth it!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Spirits Abroad

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

Review – Spirits Abroad

Spirits Abroad

by Zen Cho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Solo Leveling, vol 3

Posted August 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Solo Leveling, vol 3

Solo Leveling

by Dubu, Chugong

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 313
Series: Solo Leveling #3
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Thus far, Jinwoo has managed to keep his rapid evolution hidden from his fellow hunters. When he arrives at his latest assignment, though, he is greeted by a group of familiar faces-Joohee, Mr. Song, and the other survivors of the double dungeon are gathered for the raid, and his comrades can’t help but notice Jinwoo’s drastic change in stature! Jinwoo intends to act the weakling he was before, but when their party is joined by a group of criminals and their association minder, Jinwoo may have no choice but to push his newly acquired skills to the limit if he and his friends want to get out alive!

It feels like each successive volume of the Solo Leveling manhwa gets a bit darker. In volume three, Jinwoo ends up reuniting with the other survivors of the incident during which he reawakened, ends up in another situation where the system makes him kill, and gets… a job change quest! I continue to enjoy the use of common gaming mechanics, though I was surprised by the job that Jinwoo eventually gets offered…

About which I won’t spoiler, though plenty of reviews do! It’s an interesting turn, in any case, and I’m curious how it’ll go. I’m also curious if Jinwoo is right that the System needs him for something, and what that will entail if so.

I’m interested to see whether Jinwoo keeps losing emotions as the system shapes him, too. He’s definitely becoming colder and more pragmatic, and it’s not clear whether that’s really good for him. I’d like to see more of his sister and his life outside hunting, to be honest.

It’s wild how much Jinwoo has changed in style, though. We see a bit of a flashback to the old Jinwoo in this volume, and it really highlights the differences.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Serpents in Eden

Posted August 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Serpents in Eden

Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 276
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

'The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.... Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.' - Sherlock Holmes

Many of the greatest British crime writers have explored the possibilities of crime in the countryside in lively and ingenious short stories. Serpents in Eden celebrates the rural British mystery by bringing together an eclectic mix of crime stories written over half a century. From a tale of poison-pen letters tearing apart a village community to a macabre mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories collected here reveal the dark truths hidden in an assortment of rural paradises. Among the writers included here are such major figures as G. K. Chesterton and Margery Allingham, along with a host of lesser-known discoveries whose best stories are among the unsung riches of the golden age of British crime fiction between the two world wars.

As ever, the British Library Crime Classics series editor, Martin Edwards, put together a spread of stories by different authors and from slightly different periods for Serpents in Eden, themed around mysteries set in the countryside. Some of them are better than others, but overall I thought it was a pretty strong collection.

A highlight for me was the R. Austin Freeman story; he’s always so thorough, and while in this one I had an idea what Thorndyke was looking for, it was interesting to see the process unfold. At least as far as the detecting part goes — the spy stuff was a little less interesting to me, but that just provides the motive, and not much of the actual mystery part.

For some reason this one did take me longer to finish than I’d have guessed, so I guess it was a bit slow/the majority of the stories were quite long, but it’s not like I minded that.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Book Forger

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

Review – The Book Forger

The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime That Fooled The World

by Joseph Hone

Genres: Mystery, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, he is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for unearthing the most stunning first editions and bringing them to market. Pompous and fearsome, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books.

One night, two young booksellers - one a dishevelled former communist, the other a martini-swilling fan of detective stories - stumble upon a strange discrepancy. It will lead them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case, but find its extent is greater than they ever could have imagined. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core.

I have a weird quibble with Joseph Hone’s The Book Forger which is going to sound very, very niche, but took me aback: he talks about Dorothy L. Sayers, and compares the real people about whom he’s writing to her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. He quotes from The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, and then… very bizarrely gets everything wrong, claiming that Wimsey has found arsenic on the victim’s shoe (no, he found varnish) and that he died of it (no, he died of digitalin). What actually happens is that Wimsey visits the analyst with the varnish sample, and the analyst is finishing up with a sample that’s full of arsenic unrelated to Wimsey’s case.

It’s just a weird sloppy mistake, and it’s not germane to the overall point he’s making or the real detective work he’s recounting, but at the same time… if he can’t manage to read that scene properly, or research it to check his recollection is correct, how do I trust the rest of the book?

I keep getting stick now and then for noticing and caring about this sort of thing (and counting it into my ratings), but in non-fiction, it does matter. If you get wrong a point I can verify, or interpret a study without noticing it has bias (in the technical sense, e.g. like selection bias), or just make a muck of explaining something I understand well… how can I trust the rest of the work?

Now, that aside I did rather enjoy The Book Forger. I knew little about Thomas J. Wise beforehand, and nothing at all about the two men who unmasked him (Pollard and Carter), so the fact that it’s careful to set the scene is helpful, though there’s a certain amount of imaginative reconstruction (quoting e.g. letters wherever possible).

It’s worth keeping in mind while reading it that a certain amount of it is fiction in a sense, but it does lay out the likely events, grounded in the evidence that’s available (so far as I can tell), and it is quite the story. I’d maybe have liked to see the impacts a bit more: do the fakes still circulate? Might there be more that we haven’t identified and dissected? How has it impacted e.g. scholarship?

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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