6th May 2024

Andrew Hunter Murray’s third novel is an amusing yet insightful tale that follows Al, a self-described interloper, as his life turns chaotic and everything starts to go wrong.

The character is a great creation and tells the story with humour in a really easy to read narrative and totally believable loss of control.

For the most part, it’s a much more light hearted tale than the author’s first two books, but as it goes on there is a varied undercurrent of societal commentary that bounces through the cracks.

I really enjoyed reading this, and look forward to more from this storyteller.

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28th April 2024

This was a charity shop purchase which I’m absolutely delighted by.

I was caught totally off guard right away when the book went somewhere so different to what I was expecting, and I was hooked.

I read the entire book in 24 hours, it’s so well done, easy to read, funny, and with a plot that draws you forward at a great pace.

There a tough line with a plot like this where the crime is so personal to the main character, and Shearer treads this excellently, balancing the serious nature of the crime with the lighthearted presentation of the interaction between the two main characters.

Despite the brevity, the running gags entertained me every chapter. I’m definitely going to need to read the sequel soon.

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28th April 2024

The fourth and final Wayfarers book takes us to a low population planet that serves as a rest stop along a galactic superhighway, where three guests are trapped with their host during a planetwide emergency.

It’s a delightful novel which is super easy to read, about five very different characters from different backgrounds learning to live together temporarily, and to support each other through a crisis.

The universe that Chambers has created with these novels is wonderful to visit, and there’s so much detail that’s gone into the world building and yet still it’s presented in such a way this doesn’t impact the readability. Yes, my brain struggles to imagine the physicalities of some of the species represented, but that doesn’t stop me appreciating the personalities, the life stories, and the difficulties that each face.

It’s been a really nice series to read, and I hope that I find the same satisfaction in her other and future works.

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28th April 2024

This was another new book I picked up based on the attractive cover art, and though it turned out not to be my normal thing, I’m glad I did.

It’s the story of a young woman looking for what to do next after college, and to escape her hometown. It’s the story of a friendship she develops with a colleague. And it’s a story of the knowable and the unknowable. There’s a lot of psychology of the characters that someone more knowledgable than me in that area could die into.

I felt lost a few times while reading - the passage of time flowed oddly or I had to go back and check whether I had missed something, and sometimes I had, sometimes I hadn’t. It’s quite a slow burn for a lot of the book, and I sort of feel like the darkness leads to a dampening of emotion.

I did enjoy this visit outside my normal genres, but I don’t think it’s the sort of reading material that could sustain me full time and I suspect it will be a while before I try something similar again.

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20th April 2024

Having finally managed to catch up on all the episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy’s first season, I felt comfortable starting my dive into the three novels that have been published.

It is a short novel, and clearly printed for younger authors, with large, sans-serif text on very cheap paper, and a fast pace story.

The most important thing for me though is that the author has totally captured the feeling of Prodigy. The book reads just like it’s an episode of the TV series, with the right pacing, the right use of the characters, the right peril, and the right morals.

Compared with early novels from other Star Treks, this feels the most spot on with its characterisation and world. Every character gets a chance to shine and I loved it for that.

A jolly good little adventure.

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20th April 2024

I really loved Saara El-Arifi’s first two novels, so was intrigued to see what she’s constructed in another world. In some respects, it’s a quite different sort of story, but it retains a lot of the progressive elements that I’m finding very comforting in my reading at the moment.

The book paints a picture of a new world, with distinct cultures to explore, and a rich mythology. One of the things I particularly noticed is that there is a lot going on that is obvious to the reader and yet the characters miss it entirely, which makes me think this is perhaps particularly targeted at an audience that is maybe less familiar with more complex intrigue and welcomes this more casual approach to storytelling. Despite this though, there were still reveals that surprised me, so I think overall a good balance has been found.

The story clearly uses some of the tropes that have appeared in genre recently that bridge fantasy into romance, and I felt much more comfortable with that here than in some novels I’ve read which I found just surprised me with the flip into graphic sex mode. This is a gentler approach to coupling the genres and I found that felt more balanced.

It’s a simpler read than El-Arifi’s other, darker series, and I’m sure will totally find its audience and leave them waiting for sequels and to find out what happens next. I’m not sure I’m quite in that camp at the moment though.

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20th April 2024

I bought this short novel after seeing the author recommended for fans of Becky Chambers. It’s not quite in the same space I don’t feel, but close enough that I still found myself enjoying it, particularly as I got more and more invested in the character and the world.

It is a book about climate change, to some extent, and so I had some trepidation at the start because the setting felt like it was going to be depressing. I think though that there is a narrative filled with hope despite the setting, which eventually comes to balance it out.

Although presented as a novella, it actually feels more like a sequence of short stories which are, in turn, sequels or prequels to one another, following the same character. That is to say, each chapter contains a fairly distinct episode in the character’s journey. This makes for a very readable structure.

I’ve added Curtis to my read list and will be looking out to buy her next novel soon.

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