Tag: book reviews

Review – All Of Us Murderers

Posted November 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – All Of Us Murderers

All of Us Murderers

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 343
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A genre-bending Gothic mystery with a strong LGBTQIA+ romance from beloved, award-winning author KJ Charles.

When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative’s remote Gothic house on Dartmoor, he finds all the people he least wants to see in the world—his estranged brother, his loathsome cousins, and his bitter ex-lover, Gideon Grey. Nothing, he is certain, could possibly be worse.

Then the grizzled old patriarch announces the true purpose of the gathering: He intends to leave the vast family fortune to whichever of the men marries Cousin Jessamine, setting off a violent scramble for her hand and his wealth. Disinterested in being tied further to a family he can barely stand, Zeb tries to leave…only to realize that he’s been trapped. The walls are high, the gates are locked, and when the mists roll in, there’s no way out.

And there may be something trapped within the dark monstrosity of a house with them.

Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his whole heart. As the mists descend, the gaslight flickers, and terror takes its hold, two warring lovers must reconcile in time to uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale.

It took me a bit to get into KJ Charles’ All of Us Murderers: I was pretty sure I would enjoy it, because I’ve really enjoyed almost all of her books, but the opening has almost the whole cast being really unpleasant to each other. Which I should’ve perhaps expected, given that it’s heavily gothic in inspiration, but I guess it felt like a bit of added nastiness than the main character plainly has ADHD, and that’s used as a weapon against him.

That said, once Gideon and Zeb actually start talking to each other and not just sniping, and especially as they work through what happened and start working together, it becomes a lot more fun. It isn’t just Zeb with a massive target on his back, but the two of them against the united forces of Zeb’s horrible family, and you can be pretty sure they’ll win out in the end.

It didn’t take me long to figure out basically what was happening, but it was still interesting to be along for the ride and watch Zeb steadfastly refusing to believe in supernatural occurrences… and it was still fun to have the dramatic and very gothic reveals of what exactly is going on, and what the plan is.

Gideon and Zeb — once they’re talking to each other — make a good team, and I love that (despite his self-recriminations) it’s really plain that their break-up wasn’t all Zeb’s fault. There’s a bit of sharpness round the edges with how they’ve handled Zeb’s ADHD together in the past: Gideon covering for him and taking care of him, but also sometimes getting exasperated and seeming to treat him like a child, or sniping at him because of it. The relationship feels so vivid and realistic, even (or especially?) against the ridiculous gothic background.

To clarify: when I call it a ridiculous gothic background, I say this with affection. Charles was clearly having fun with the setting and genre, and I enjoyed it very much. But it’s ridiculous all the same, if you try to explain the plot outside of the story itself and all the atmospheric trappings it builds up.

I was a bit surprised by how it ended for Zeb and Gideon, because that felt pretty un-gothic — but then, they could hardly have had a happy ending if they’d let the gothic story decide their fate, and this was the best way for them to be happy. I was very pleased by that part!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Honey Witch

Posted November 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Honey Witch

The Honey Witch

by Sydney J. Shields

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 348
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Marigold Claude is entering another season without any intentions of accepting a proposal. When her eccentric grandmother Althea visits and finally provides an explanation for Marigold's strange magical abilities, they return to the Lake Isle of Innisfree where she begins training as a Honey Witch-an apothecary and alchemist who uses her magical connection with the bees to create enchanted honey for her spells.

While this lovely power leaves her especially adept at helping others find love, it also comes with an ancient curse that none have been able to break: no one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.

When Lottie Burke, a notorious grumpy skeptic who doesn't believe in magic, accompanies her best friend to the cottage for a love spell, Marigold can't resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. She invites Lottie and her best friend, August Owens, to stay with her for the summer to prove her abilities, but Marigold begins to care for Lottie in a way she never expected.

She longs to break the curse and escape her lonely fate, but when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her freedom-at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.

I was kinda prepared for Sydney J. Shields’ The Honey Witch to be mediocre, based on a few reviews I’d read beforehand — I ended up getting it in a sale, just to give it a shot. It’s a semi-cosy fantasy romance which ends up involving rather a lot of dramatic bleeding, burning, death during a sex scene, enslavement, poisoning, etc. It tries for a sort of cottagecore aesthetic over the top, but the dramatic story that provides the set-up makes that pretty impossible.

It’s also just… not very good, with more plot holes than Proud Immortal Demon Way, and I absolutely refuse to die and become one of the characters to fix it (shoutout to the two danmei fans in my audience; sorry to the rest of you, I just couldn’t resist — this was a reference to The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System). For example, the main character’s grandmother is a Honey Witch. She has an enemy, an Ash Witch, who cursed her so that she can never be loved, with the stated intention of ending her bloodline.

However…

1. I don’t know if the author needs this explained or something, but you don’t have to be in love to have sex and conceive a child.
2. The main character’s grandmother can (and did) have a child parthenogenically.
3. Even though the main character’s mother chose her true love over being a Honey Witch and gave up her power, her child inherited the power and could become a Honey Witch.

So… there is no sense in which the curse works for the stated purpose, even if you assume you have to be in love to have a baby in this world (which is never stated).

The world-building is also incredibly clunky. It’s a Regency-ish world, and we’re given to understand in the opening that there are distinctive gender roles for men and women, which the main character wants to flout by becoming a witch. Except… it becomes apparent that same-sex relationships are totally fine and celebrated, including by the main character’s family. Yet no thought is given to the effect that might have on gender roles.

I don’t even want to get into the enemies-to-lovers thing going on with Lottie and Marigold, or the sex scene which literally kills Lottie (and is kind of horrifying to just come across without being aware that it’s not a steamy scene, a character is literally going to die mid-scene, even if she gets better because magic).

It’s… it’s just really not good, folks, and I didn’t even like the style. It felt like we’re just expected as readers to instantly get invested in things like Marigold’s relationship with her grandmother (who she hasn’t seen since she was a child) or friendship with August (likewise), or her interest in Lottie, a girl who can barely even be polite to her for the first half of the book.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – The Deep Dark

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

Review – The Deep Dark

The Deep Dark

by Lee Knox Ostertag

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 470
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Everyone has secrets. Mags's has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there's her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won't get attached, of course. She's always been strong enough to survive without anyone's help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.

I found Lee Knox Ostertag’s The Deep Dark a little predictable in a way — almost familiar, really made me wonder if I’d maybe read it before? But I don’t think so. Anyway, I wouldn’t say that finding it predictable was a bad thing, to be clear: it was more about the connection between Nessa and Mags for me, the path they took to the ending, than about being stunningly original.

It’s about self-blame and acceptance, even when it’s really, really hard. Yeah, it’s obvious as a metaphor when you get there, but that doesn’t make it any less of an important story. And the relationship between Nessa and Mags is in part about learning you don’t just have to go it on your own, and again, about finding self-worth… all of these are stories worth telling, especially with a trans girl and a butch girl as the protagonists.

I always really like Ostertag’s art, and I liked this too — character design, expressions, etc.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Eating to Extinction

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

Review – Eating to Extinction

Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need To Save Them

by Dan Saladino

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

Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2022 - Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, showing why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.

From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change.

Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It is about the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.

Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction has a certain amount of inherent repetition: we’re losing a lot of rare and traditional foods because of monocultures, cultural homogenisation, loss of habitat, etc. Each example can start to feel like it’s really hammering home the point a bit too much, though it does help that the chapters are arranged by theme and he discusses a few representative cereal crops, a few representative animal breeds, etc.

Even though it’s a bit repetitive — and at times really sad, because we’re losing so much, some of which we barely know we have — I found it really fascinating to read through the various examples. It made me wonder about how things taste, whether I’d like them; I’m aware that in being quite sensitive to taste and texture, I benefit from a fairly homogenised world where a burger will always taste pretty much the same within fairly narrow boundaries, for instance. My snacks are alike, bag for bag, without a great deal of variation (if any) within a brand. But I’m still sure that there are tastes I’d love out there, things that would be worth trying.

As with so many things, the main story here is that humans are exploiting the environment and making changes that are going to shoot us in the foot. Monocultures are bad, and if we’re not careful, we could see huge famines. We’re losing genetic diversity in our food crops in searching for bigger and bigger yields, sometimes for good reason (to feed hungry people) and sometimes for mere profit.

I was already pretty alive to the problems of stuff like battery farm chickens, monoculture, etc; it wasn’t a wakeup call for me so much as a nudge to keep thinking about it, and to find ways to act, because awareness isn’t enough. And Saladino makes an excellent case for the delights we’re missing out on, and may lose forever.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – So Far So Good

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

Review – So Far So Good

So Far So Good

by Ursula Le Guin

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 100
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin was lauded by millions for her ground- breaking science fiction novels, but she began as a poet, and wrote across genres for her entire career. In this clarifying and sublime collection--completed shortly before her death in 2018--Le Guin is unflinching in the face of mortality, and full of wonder for the mysteries beyond. Redolent of the lush natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, with rich sounds playfully echoing myth and nursery rhyme, Le Guin bookends a long, daring, and prolific career.

Ursula Le Guin’s So Far So Good was her last collection of poetry, with her edits sent in just before her death. I wouldn’t say that’s particularly obvious in the poems — she’s no more preoccupied with death than she ever was, in this collection, at least.

They didn’t all land for me, but there are some lovely ones, and Le Guin’s way with language and imagery is always in evidence. Here’s a favourite, “On Second Hill”:

Where on this wild hill alone
a child watched the evening star,
let these bits of ash and bone
rejoin the earth they always were,
the earth that let her sing her love,
the gift that made the giver
here on the lonely hill above
the valley of the river.

Very typical Le Guin, of course.

An enjoyable collection, and reminded me that I haven’t read all her poetry but have at least one of her other collections from an old Humble Bundle… off to check whether I’ve read that!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – I Could Murder Her

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

Review – I Could Murder Her

I Could Murder Her

by E.C.R. Lorac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 191
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Muriel Farrington is a domineering woman who, unfortunately for them, has her entire family living with her in her stately home. She tries, often successfully, to run the lives of her children, her stepchildren, her in-laws, and her husband, and she seems to be despised by all except her husband and one son.

When she is found dead one morning in her bed, the family doctor, who is old, ill, and hasn’t been very able for years, is unable to attend and bestow a certificate, which he would have done without investigation or thought.

A younger, more able and perceptive doctor has to be called in, to the shock of whoever the murderer was, and he does not find the death natural...

I Could Murder Her features E.C.R. Lorac’s series detective, Inspector Macdonald, digging once more into a tense net of family relationships and rivalries in order to discover who murdered their (rather awful) matriarch, who was a bit of a strangling vine. There are a couple of very likeable characters — straightforward, capable, earnest — of the type Lorac’s so good at writing, people with good hearts, and I didn’t guess the murderer this time at all.

It’s possible I should’ve seen it coming, because Macdonald and his subordinate seem to have had their eyes on it the whole time, but I suppose I didn’t really want it to be that character. For all that each book features an almost completely new cast, I can’t help but end up caring about Lorac’s characters, and feeling strongly about some of them.

Whiiiich means that at the end of this book I ended up feeling decidedly uncosy and unhappy, because I didn’t want that person to be the murderer and the effects on all the other characters would be awful as a result. It’s still a good mystery, and a good example of Lorac’s writing; personally it didn’t entirely work because I didn’t want it to end like that, but that tells you something about Lorac’s ability to make a reader care. Even though most of her books stand alone, each one gets me fully invested.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Vampyre

Posted November 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Vampyre

The Vampyre

by John William Polidori

Genres: Classics, Fantasy
Pages: 54
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Lord Ruthven is a mysterious newcomer among England’s social elite. A young gentleman named Aubrey is fascinated by the suave stranger and is intrigued by his often curious behaviour. While travelling in Europe amid rumours of vampire killings, the pair are attacked, leaving Ruthven on his death bed. As he draws his last breaths, he pleads with Aubrey to keep his death a secret for just over a year. When Ruthven reappears in London alive and well, Aubrey realises that his friend might be hiding dark and horrifying truths behind his seductive fabrication.

The Vampyre was written during the ‘Lost Summer of 1816’, when John William Polidori was among the group of friends who accompanied Lord Byron to the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. This short, stormy stay in the mansion led to a horror story writing competition in which famous tales such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were first produced.

Decadent, sinister, and macabre The Vampyre started the enduring fascination with bloodsucking monsters that produced stories such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This chilling tale is not to be missed by lovers of fantasy and horror fiction.

I basically read John William Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ because Lord Ruthven (the vampire of the title) is a major character in Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing books, which I adore. To be fair, the character would hate that anyone read this, but… sorry, got curious! Especially since Polidori certainly had an influence on later portrayals of vampires.

Often viewed as a diss of Byron, it’s definitely readable as such, and it’s definitely at least heavily linked with Byron, given Caroline Lamb’s previous use of the name for a thinly-disguised Byron. It’s pretty fun to read it as a diss, though poking around a bit there’s some criticism of that reading, which also seems reasonable (it would hardly be the declaration of independence from Byron that some people think it is if it’s also centering a triumphant Byron stand-in). There’s that whole vampire-typical loathing/fascination thing going on…
And hey, a rare seasonally appropriate read for me! Spoopy season, that is; I finished this in October.
Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – The Genius Myth

Posted November 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Genius Myth

The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers

by Helen Lewis

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 352
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Everything you think you know about genius is wrong.

Most discoveries don't come in a flash of inspiration. Most high achievers aren't obsessive loners with high IQs. Most 'geniuses' have collaborators and well-developed support networks. What is a genius? Very often, it's the person who takes the credit.

Helen Lewis takes aim at the myth of the solitary genius, exploring historical and contemporary examples to show how a set of stories influence our idea of the word.

This mythology would not matter so much if it didn't have a human cost. The Genius Myth lays bare the invisible support enjoyed by our most celebrated individuals: their collaborators, their teams, their wives and parents and family wealth and connection, all quietly tidied from the historical record.

By understanding the past and current models for genius, The Genius Myth works towards a possible future of a more egalitarian meritocracy.

The premise of Helen Lewis’ The Genius Myth is basically that when we moved from saying “this person has a genius for X” into “this person is a genius”, we created a mythology that serves us ill, with examples including Elon Musk and Roman Polanski. The genius label helps people get away with bad behaviour, encourages us to worship them, and causes people to think they’re going to be great at running a major social media network just because their company successfully delivered astronauts to the space station. You know, just as an example.

(As a note, Lewis gives Elon Musk more credit than I do, seeing him as very good in his field. I have questions about this, but that’s irrelevant to the main argument.)

I think Helen Lewis has a point, and this book is a good complement to Claire Dederer’s Monsters (which it mentions) because it deals with some of the same issues from a slightly different angle. It did feel like it dragged on a bit, though; I could’ve used a couple fewer case studies and some tighter prose.

Still, some interesting points, and also examples of how the genius myth covers even for people who aren’t as highly placed as Musk, using an example of a now-disgraced playwright who was also a paedophile.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Audition for the Fox

Posted November 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Audition for the Fox

Audition for the Fox

by Martin Cahill

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 128
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a loveable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must ally with her besieged people and learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox was a pretty random find, about which I knew very little other than that it was a novella that had just released. It turned out to be set in a fantasy world with many gods and many stories, and it felt very much like a single person’s story within a broader and richer world, which is something I always appreciate.

It’s a coming of age story for the main character, Nesi, who gets scent back in time by the fox god as part of her test for whether she can become an acolyte — and as with many coming of age stories, Nesi starts out a bit sheltered and spoiled, wanting to just call the Fox to help her and get out of the situation. Eventually she settles down and understands that she needs to work within the time period she’s been sent to and get the Fox’s work done, and she begins to understand what the trickster does exactly.

T’sidaan, the trickster, is one of the loveable trickster types: they’ll take a sibling down a peg when they need to, and sometimes the laugh’s on them. The conflict they bring Nesi to is darker than that, though, a fierce rivalry between T’sidaan and the wolf god — and Nesi comes to understand both why T’sidaan finds this particular conflict so important, and also why T’sidaan won’t descend to the wolf god’s level, always contending with him on their own terms. It’s a very effective illustration of being careful not to become the thing you’re fighting, and the scene where it’s all revealed is good.

I liked the world, and Nesi’s allies, and there’s a genuine wrenching when Nesi’s test is over and she returns to her own time, which I also liked. It’s not a bloodless story, even though T’sidaan and Nesi are acting as tricksters, destabilising through meddling rather than outright war: it has teeth.

So overall, really enjoyable, especially the sense that there are so many other stories, a whole world that’s been thought out (or could be thought out) in order to play in.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Solo Leveling, vol 7

Posted November 11, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Solo Leveling, vol 7

Solo Leveling

by Dubu, Chugong

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 304
Series: Solo Leveling #7
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The joint expedition between South Korea and Japan to the ant-infested Jeju Island is well underway, and the Korean team has successfully located the queen. Taking her out should finally spell the long-awaited closing of the S-rank gate. But little do they know that wings aren't the only mutation the latest generation of ants has gone through— and having made short work of the Japanese hunters, the queen’s strongest soldier is now headed straight for them!

Volume 7 of the Solo Leveling manhwa features Jinwoo being more overpowered than ever, with him finally jumping into the action at Jeju Island, along with some aftermath stuff that makes it increasingly obvious how different he is to other hunters. There’s a reference again to the earlier reappearance of his father, though I’m impatient for that to get somewhere so we can find out more about where he’s been, whether it really is him, etc, etc.

The tension doesn’t come from wondering whether/how Jinwoo will win, at this point: it’s obvious that he will, that he’s constantly leveling up, and can outmatch anything thrown at him. Instead, it’s about what the System is, what certain mysterious characters/conversations mean, and so on. I’m getting really curious about what it’s building up to, and when we’ll finally see something that really tests Jinwoo.

I wish there’d been a tad more about his mother and sister, given the development in the last book, as well.

Anyway, looking forward to reading more, though not sure what exactly is next after Jeju Island!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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