Tag: book reviews

Review – The Wife Comes First, vol 2

Posted September 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Wife Comes First, vol 2

The Wife Comes First

by Lv Ye Qian He

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 323
Series: The Wife Comes First #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

On the brink of death, Prince Cheng is stunned to find the one person still by his side: his long-neglected princely consort, Mu Hanzhang. While Prince Cheng pursued power and countless lovers, Mu Hanzhang never wavered in his dedication as his wife, despite the future he lost. Prince Cheng knows he never deserved such loyalty.

But fate isn’t finished with him yet. When he awakens in the past—on the morning after their disastrous wedding night, with all his memories intact—Prince Cheng seizes the chance to set things right. This time, he’ll treasure Mu Hanzhang. This time, the wife will come first, the state second, and the husband last.

Yet winning Mu Hanzhang’s trust is only the first battle. Court conspiracies still run deep, and if they’re not careful, history may repeat itself…starting with a knife in the back.

Volume two of Lv Ye Qian He’s The Wife Comes First picks up directly from the previous volume, and mostly concerns Jing Shao and Mu Hanzhang going to war. Junqing spends a chunk of the story pretending to be just a ‘strategist’, since it usually isn’t permitted for generals to take their wives with them to war, but Jing Shao (great big puppy that he is) wheedles and begs his way into Junqing’s tent, and soon eveeeryone knows who he must be.

There are some really sweet moments between the two of them as they really solidify their relationship and speak honestly to one another about their feelings. I loved it; it’d be easy to introduce drama and a third act breakup, and I think in “Western” fiction that’d happen — but instead we just get to watch the two of them being ridiculously devoted to each other and an absolute power couple.

Also, Junqing gets a baby tiger cub.

There’s a fair bit of politicking and so on, so the plot also advances, hopefully carrying Jing Shao and Junqing past the difficulties that plagued Jing Shao’s past life. I’m kinda eh on the white lie about the previous attempt being a dream that Jing Shao had, but at least he’s found a way to explain some of his foreknowledge to Junqing, instead of leaving him out.

The problematic elements of consent and the treatment of women mostly aren’t carried through in this book, in part because I think only two named female characters show up in the whole thing (Ge Ruoyi and Hao Dadao’s wife). As mentioned, it’s really not the best-written, and I think that can also add to the problem, making the characterisation of a lot of characters flat. I’m here for Jing Shao and Mu Hanzhang (and their tiger cub), so your mileage may vary on how much it bothers you. My rating is definitely reflecting personal enjoyment and the way I raced through the book, not a considered critical response! Possibly if I went with my gut now, I’d lower it to 3/5… but I really had fun while reading it.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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

Posted September 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

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

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

by Sleepy-C, Umi, singNsong

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 248
Series: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (manhwa) #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

AT THAT MOMENT, MY LIFE TOOK ON A DIFFERENT GENRE.

As a struggling office worker, Dokja Kim's sole joy in life is an online novel so obscure that he's its only reader. Then one day the story comes to an end…and so does the world. People all around the globe suddenly find themselves being massacred by horrific monsters or pitted against each other in sadistic scenarios straight out of the novel. However, only Dokja is aware that this is merely the first chapter of what is to come. Knowing that devastating plot twists are on the horizon, he can no longer afford to sit back as a reader—it's time for Dokja to step up and write his own destiny!

Having read the first two volumes of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint light novel, there’s nothing new in this first volume (adapted by UMI with art by Sleepy-C). It’s really fun though to get a look at the characters: some of them are exactly how I imagined them, to the extent that I do any kind of visual imagining (basically, I found them instantly recognisable), while others I had to warm up to a bit, but now I can’t imagine them looking any other way.

If you’re new to ORV, then this volume is very introductory, covering only the first hours in the new world that Dokja Kim enters when his favourite novel becomes “paid content” and starts becoming true. There’s only really a glimpse here of how things work, but it’s probably enough to figure out if ORV is totally not your thing from the get-go and whether you’re curious enough to want more (of either format, though I think I’d go with the novel for a better intro to how things work).

There are a couple of slightly different translation things, compared to the light novel, but it’s all pretty intercompatible.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Flowers of a Moment

Posted September 6, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Flowers of a Moment

Flowers of a Moment

by Ko Un

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 103
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Flowers of a Moment is a treasure trove of more than 180 brief poems by a major world poet at the apex of his career. A four-time Nobel Prize nominee, Ko Un grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation. During the Korean War, he was conscripted by the People's Army. In 1952, he became a Buddhist and lived a monastic life for ten years. For his activism confronting South Korea's dictatorial military government, he was imprisoned and tortured. He has published more than one hundred volumes of poetry, essays, fiction, drama, and translations of Chinese poetry.

Flowers of a Moment is a collection of short poems by Ko Un, in translation from Korean. Some of them are only a few words long across a couple of lines: rather than long evocations of feelings and situations, it feels more like they’re a collection of moments of stillness and observation.

Predictably I liked this one, though it’s probably the most trite of the lot:

There has to be more energy for loving
than energy for hating
Here in this world,
and in the other world too,
there is a morning, evening, night worth
living

I light a lamp in solitude

A very quick read, but sometimes it was worth lingering with an image or feeling. It’s lightly illustrated as well, but I didn’t think that added a lot.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Welsh Food Stories

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

Review – Welsh Food Stories

Welsh Food Stories

by Carwyn Graves

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 272
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Welsh Food Stories explores more than two thousand years of history to discover the rich but forgotten heritage of Welsh foods - from oysters to cider, salted butter to salt-marsh lamb. Despite centuries of industry, ancient traditions have survived in pockets across the country among farmers, bakers, fisherfolk, brewers and growers who are taking Welsh food back to its roots, and trailblazing truly sustainable foods as they do so. In this important book, author Carwyn Graves travels Wales to uncover the country's traditional foods and meet the people making them today. There are the owners of a local Carmarthenshire chip shop who never forget a customer, the couple behind Anglesey's world-renowned salt company Halen Mon, and everyone else in between - all of them have unique and compelling stories to tell about how they contribute to the past, present and future of Welsh food. This is an evocative and insightful exploration of an often overlooked national cuisine, shining a spotlight on the importance - environmentally and socially - of keeping local food production alive.

I’ve been meaning to get around to reading Carwyn Graves’ Welsh Food Stories for a while, because I don’t actually know much about the Welsh food tradition (as distinct from a more general British one). I do know about bara brith and Welshcakes and laverbread and cawl… but that’s not all there is to it, right? And indeed, Graves digs deeper into it than that, discussing the kind of flour produced in Wales historically, the saltiness of the butter, the joy of leeks, etc.

What I was pleased to find is that a lot of the things I love — salty butter, sweet ciders, and of course plentiful cheese, even though I had my gallbladder removed well over a decade ago and can’t digest it so well — are pretty in line with historic Welsh tastes! Despite the snobbery about sweet cider that I sometimes encountered in the English folk music scene, historically Welsh ciders tend to be much sweeter than English ones (though admittedly I think my love of toffee apple cider is probably a step too far).

I think at times Graves tends toward the preachy about eating locally and eating traditional food and using traditional varieties, but not without merit, and overall I found it a good read and learned things: my favourite new information was about the Breton Sioni Winwns, though of course, Brexit ended that tradition entirely.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

Posted September 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper

by A.J. Fitzwater

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories
Pages: 145
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Cinrak the Dapper is a keeper of secrets, a righter of wrongs, the saltiest capybara on the sea and a rider of both falling stars and a great glass whale. Join her, her beloveds, the rat Queen Orvilia and the marmot diva Loquolchi, lead soprano of the Theatre Rat-oyal, her loyal cabin kit, Benj the chinchilla, and Agnes, last of the great krakens, as they hunt for treasures of all kinds and find adventures beyond their wildest dreams. Let Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning storyteller A.J. Fitzwater take you on a glorious journey about finding yourself, discovering true love and exploring the greatest secrets of the deep. Also, dapperness.

I read this ages ago and realised I’d never posted the review! So I dug it out for you now…

I’d heard about this book quite frequently, but only picked it up recently, for some reason. I love the idea of a dapper, polyamorous, lesbian pirate capybara, and the introduction to the book states something really vital: queer joy is important. Yes, we still have fighting to do, to ban conversion therapy and reverse the recent erosion of trans rights… but to do that we need to nourish ourselves. Our joy is needed too. Plus, a happy queer person is one in the eye for the haters.

So… I wanted to love this book, and I definitely did enjoy the diverse cast, the inclusiveness of Cinrak’s crew and world.

But it feels a little like a collection of stories based on an existing world that the reader should already be familiar with. Things aren’t explained, they just happen. Oh, Cinrak has salt magic — okay, but what does that mean? What are the bounds on it? I initially got the impression it was all sea-related, then it can also sense danger, then it can bust open other magic to save the day… Cinrak and crew always suddenly had the resources/capabilities needed in any given situation.

There were a lot of gaps, and they weren’t the kind that are just part of figuring out the world; I like worldbuilding that makes you do the work, but this wasn’t that.

This collection is enjoyable — and hey, a dapper polyamorous lesbian pirate capybara is a glorious concept and one I’m glad to have met — just didn’t quite work out for me.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Cat + Gamer, vol 5

Posted September 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Cat + Gamer, vol 5

Cat + Gamer

by Wataru Nadatani

Genres: Manga
Pages: 160
Series: Cat + Gamer #5
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Office worker Riko Kozakura supports her entire band of adventurers—including the two cats she cohabitates with, party members Musubi and Soboro!

Follow along as the three live, learn, and grow together. New quests and challenges offer the trio plenty of XP! “Leveling up” in skills, surprises, and adventures extends to real life, as Riko discovers what it’s like living with two cats!

Wataru Nadatani’s hilarious manga series is translated by Zack Davisson (Demon Days, Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan) and lettered by Susie Lee of Studio Cutie.

In the fifth volume of Cat + Gamer, Musubi and Soboro (the kitties) are bonded and definitely up to a lot of hijinks. It continues to be a cute and fun concept, though personally I could do with a bit less of the “verbal” communication (with speech bubbles) between Musubi and Soboro — when Musubi was alone, the bits from his POV felt more like realistic cat behaviour (somewhat anthropomorphised, but less silly, I guess).

Still, who hasn’t imagined the daft conversations that might happen between two pets, and the way they might be interpreting the weird world we put them in? I know I’m constantly anthropomorphising our bunnies…

Definitely still cute, anyway, and I love the double trouble.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Weather Wheel

Posted September 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Weather Wheel

The Weather Wheel

by Mimi Khalvati

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 80
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In these new poems, each of them written in couplets and contained within the space of 16 lines, Mimi Khalvati takes the weather, the seasons, and the passage of night and day as the ground on which she draws her emblems of human life and love. An extended elegy for her mother, the book is also a series of meditations on the small details of animals' lives and on the vulnerable animal within the human being.

I didn’t enjoy The Weather Wheel as much as I enjoyed the other collection I’ve read by Mimi Khalvati, though there were a few images and poems that struck me and will probably stick with me, mostly surrounding her grief for her mother, like this couplet:

I measured distances by her. My mother my compass,
my almanac and sundial, drawing me arcs in space.

Overall, not a favourite collection, but all the same, my feeling when I finished it was fairly positive, if that makes sense! Something I’m glad to have read, more for the overall impression than for individual poems.

I liked the Afterwardness collection quite a bit more, though.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 3

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

Review – Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 3

Mistakenly Saving the Villain

by Feng Yu Nie

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 308
Series: Mistakenly Saving the Villain #3
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

SOME MISTAKES ARE DESTINY

After a dramatic confrontation with An Long, Song Qingshi and Yue Wuhuan finally begin to speak openly about their feelings. Their relationship deepens—an oasis of tenderness in a world that has offered them little peace.

But shadows remain. Even with treatment, Yue Wuhuan’s illness still festers, and Song Qingshi faces his own sickness: the slow collapse of his cultivation. Worse yet, the system—the mysterious voice that first bound him to this story—is far from satisfied with his failure to save the “right” person.

As the truth behind Song Qingshi’s biggest mistake unravels, so does reality itself. Perhaps he and Yue Wuhuan are nothing more than puppets of fate, destined to be twisted and broken by the heavens. Is anything in the world strong enough to break that cycle?

Volume three of Mistakenly Saving the Villain opens on that horrible cliffhanger, and predictably the two of them solve it in the most stupid possible way, by not talking about it properly and just sort of sliding into a relationship anyway. I say this as someone who basically did that in my own relationship with my now-wife, to be clear: I am affectionately talking about it as the most stupid possible thing.

I love that Song Qingshi is not actually as ignorant of what Yue Wuhuan is thinking and feeling as he sometimes seems, and that he works out what Yue Wuhuan is doing, coaxes him to act on his feelings, and starts helping him distinguish between what is real and what is his trauma/illness. So far it hasn’t much stopped Yue Wuhuan getting worse, because Song Qingshi doesn’t do a good job of boundaries, but… Yue Wuhuan’s unhinged devotion to Qingshi is what we’re here for, right?!

This volume then… goes places. It’s quite the ride, and I have no idea how this is all going to wrap up: the system has reasserted itself (sort of), and we get a glimpse of the bigger picture, a whole bigger tangle that Yue Wuhuan (or whatever he’d like to be called now) and Song Qingshi are part of, which I assume will round things off.

I’m trying not to say too much because a) I’m not sure I’m fully following everything yet and b) I don’t want to spoiler the wild ride for anyone else. But I’m enjoying it a lot and very eager for the last volume in October.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Lost Voices of the Nile

Posted August 31, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Lost Voices of the Nile

Lost Voices of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt

by Charlotte Booth

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 288
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

When we think of ancient Egypt, we think of the gods, the pharaohs and the pyramids. However, life for the average Egyptian was very different from this glorious perception and was not so unrecognisable from the lives we live today. This book tells the history of the ordinary population of ancient Egypt, using the stories of real people - often strange, at times amusing and ultimately very recognisable. Booth introduces us to a number of fascinating people, including Taimhotep, who married a man twice her age and turned to the god Imhotep to help her to conceive a son; Naunakhte, who disinherited her children for neglecting her in her old age; Kenhirkhopshef, a man seemingly obsessed with making lists; and Paneb, the 'bad boy' of Deir el-Medina. History is made up of people and personalities, and each of these characters has a story to tell.

Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile is a pretty thorough discussion of, as the subtitle says, day to day life in ancient Egypt. It does touch on the lives of the rich (especially as we have plentiful evidence for that), but digs through all kinds of sources, not just the tombs of the rich, to figure out what life was like for people of various different social strata in ancient Egypt.

The problem of course is that’s a huge scope: we refer lightly to “ancient Egypt”, but that covers an immense stretch of time. Booth’s pretty good at indicating when the sources she uses come from as well as where and what they are, which helps, but it all adds up to a lot of dense and sometimes dry information… and sometimes there are still inevitable gaps where we’re guessing.

As someone who’s read quite a bit about ancient Egypt, because I never grew out of that phase, I enjoyed a lot and learned a few things — including about the tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, plausibly identified as potentially representing a romantic relationship between the two (though other interpretations are discussed for what they’re worth).

Overall, yeah, a good one, with numbered footnotes (which I always prefer as it makes it much easier to check on sources), but maybe a little dry if you’re not super interested in the topic.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Fence, vol 7

Posted August 30, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Fence, vol 7

Fence: Challengers

by C.S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad, Joanna LaFuente

Genres: Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 112
Series: Fence #7
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

EN GARDE!

The beloved sports romance returns from acclaimed writer C.S. Pacat and iconic artist Johanna the Mad, pushing the saga to new competitive heights!

Kings Row are heading into the State Championships as underdog champions, and now have to contend with the best of the best in fencing–including potentially facing Exton themselves. Before they can get there though, they’ll have to get through some of the other top teams, including some old rivals…

I had no idea there was a new volume of C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad’s Fence, but here we are: volume 7, Challengers, which sees Nicholas and Seiji and the rest of Kings’ Row going up against other teams at last. The stakes are high for Nicholas, who wants to be seen by his father at last, and for Seiji, who needs to beat Jesse…

There are a few adorable references to Nicholas and Seiji’s date, sorry, I mean “appointment”, and we also get to watch the whole team grow. It’s cursedly short, is my only complaint! And I could use the slow burn between Nicholas and Seiji ramping up a bit sometime soon, honestly.

“Appointment.” Pft.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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