24th May 2025

Set during season two of Strange New Worlds, James Swallow’s new Star Trek novel follows the crew as they investigate a star that’s putting out unusual radiation, and get into all the usual trouble.

It’s a classic planet-of-the-week story with plenty of character stuff, adventure, and the occasional British cultural reference which will go totally over the head of most American readers and therefore I find incredibly delightful.

Swallow uses the range of characters, but particularly I enjoyed the time with Ortegas, who has a great balance between being a comic and deep character both on the show and in the novel.

A fun trek.

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24th May 2025

A short free ebook, teasing ahead that a new Ambrose Parry novel is not many months away.

It’s set earlier than the main series, and so doesn’t follow our usual set of characters, instead introducing us to a boy, his family troubles, and what he gets up to in 19th Century Edinburgh to deal with his situation.

There’s a good balance of real history blended with enjoyable characters. A nice little visit to this world to whet the appetite before the novel (the opening chapters of which are included in the ebook, but which I didn’t read because I don’t like early chapter drops).

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24th May 2025

Susie Dent’s novel didn’t capture me immediately, but once I’d got a few chapters in I did want to find out all the answers and about her characters.

It’s the story of a group of lexicographers writing updates for the dictionary, and some puzzling letters they start to receive, hinting at things from their past. There’s a lot going on, and it does get quite sad in places.

One thing that really bugged me was the use of the word “screenshot” to mean “took a photo of something”, which felt very weird the three times it was used, and something that I didn’t expect Dent to get wrong - I was anticipating some sort of plot point to emerge, but it never did.

Otherwise a perfectly good mystery, but I’m not sure quite inspiring enough for me to add the sequel to my wish list.

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27th April 2025

It’s 1949 and a Yorkshire police officer in disgrace is sent to a rural station to get him out of the way. But of course he finds more and more intrigue to investigate.

I was expecting something more traditional from this mystery story, and so was surprised by what I got. It doesn’t follow the typical tropes of the genre and lots of things go on that I wasn’t expecting.

The character is annoyingly mysteriously complex. There are a lot of suggestions of incompetence, mixed up with insinuations about previous adventures which suggest anything but. I found him quite frustrating to read about.

The plot felt a bit hard to follow - there was almost too much going on, and I think my expectations that things would develop in a certain way led me to not notice so much the things that were actually happening.

In general, probably not my cup of tea, and I think I’ll steer back in lane and follow more genre-typical mysteries when I need that fix in future.

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26th April 2025

A post-apocalyptic science fiction political romance thriller about a ballet dancer on Mars. What more could you ask?

This is one of those books where the cover alone sold it to me, it sat on my shelf for months, and then when I finally picked it up I loved it so much and wanted more.

It’s so hard to talk about the plot without spoiling anything, but it totally blew away my expectations and kept me surprised throughout. The character is super engaging, the world-building is stunning, there’s so much going on and I could spend so much time in this universe.

And it’s also insightful. There’s a ton of stuff about the human condition, commentary on our real world situations, but without ever feeling like it’s lecturing.

A wonderful book that I enjoyed throughout. I just wanted more!

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19th April 2025

The eleventh numbered Next Generation novel comes from 1990, and somehow has a feel of being science fiction from that era.

It’s a Troi-focussed novel, which does feel like a cool choice for during the series’ airing, and sees her experiencing other-worldly alien visitors to her mind, as well as her visiting a planet where fiction and imagination are entirely outlawed.

It’s a very interesting concept and there’s lots of cool sci-fi around how such a world might work. But I think what I was most interested in were some of the new characters that the author concocted to join the Enterprise crew, including a second blind character to work with LaForge and explore other assistive technology choices of the future.

As a narrative, I found it slightly hard going. The text felt somehow denser than in a 2020s novel, and so it took me longer than expected to get through, without the constant impetus to read that I get with some novels.

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12th April 2025

Carole and Jude get to spend some time in a neighbouring town when Carole decides to take on a beach hut to entertain her granddaughter, not realise its history will provide two mysteries for the perfectly mismatched neighbours to solve.

I enjoy these as very relaxed, low pressure comedy, mystery novels. There’s an element with this one of the crimes in question being possibly more horrific than the series tends to go for, but it’s still kept at fairly arm’s length.

There are perhaps some slightly more political discussions about some of the crimes than usual, and I didn’t find all of the resolutions very satisfying. It leaves a bit of a bitter taste at the end which disappointed me and I felt spoiled what was otherwise a nice visit to Fethering.

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