8th February 2025

I made some bad assumptions picking up this book - that it would be a cosy crime, and that it would be a bit simple and cheesy. It’s not.

This is a surprisingly dark story - fitting the locked room mystery trope, and yet feeling a lot darker than some, particularly as we learn more of the backstory and more of this story develops. There’s a lot of introspection from the characters and the main character feels deeply real and properly traumatised.

And yet that’s contrasted with the silliness of a Christmas game that the story isn’t structured around. It weaves a complex balance that’s really interesting to see play out.

I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the demographics portrayed. There’s a decent set of representation of sexualities, which isn’t what I’d have expected from the genre and was refreshing.

A really interesting, clever, and engaging book. I’ll definitely be looking out for other similar works from Benedict.

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8th February 2025

While not my usual choice of genre, this book leapt off the table in the bookshop and demanded that I buy it, and so I did.

It’s a sort of horror romance, about a young woman bringing up her younger brother in a run down American town with a creepy house.

The story isn’t really all that creepy - and the reader sees a bit more, probably, than the character, which helps it feel a bit safer. It does however try to expose a lot of nasty things about the town’s history and what it’s done to marginalised people in both the past and recent times.

I really liked the book. Maybe not enough to want to go and hunt out more by the author, but enough to consider recommending it to a friend, if I can find one I think will be into this genre twister.

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1st February 2025

Former editor turned hotelier Susan is back, as she’s dragged into a new investigation tied to a book she previously edited.

It’s a fun adventure for the most part - and Horowitz makes really good use again of the book-within-a-book format (this time without needing to use a hard-to-read typeface too).

I love that he can write one story with two styles, with such close relationships between the stories, and yet it takes right up until the end to actually see if all and how clever it is.

My only issue was with quite the swerve in tone near the end - it’s warned about, but even then felt like a bit of a let down that it had to be that way.

I enjoyed it though, and am looking forward to a third adventure.

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1st February 2025

In the third Prodigy tie-in novel, we find the crew after the end of season one, when they take a break on a planet to look for spare parts, and get caught up in a situation that tests their friendships.

The plot feels exactly like the sort of thing that would happen in a prodigy episode, and fits neatly into the universe.

The characters are there, but don’t feel quite as strongly embedded as in the previous two novels - I didn’t feel like they were playing out quite S well in my head.

A nice little revisit to the team, and a refreshing break from long books.

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25th January 2025

Book five of the Stormlight Archive is enormous. It took me five weeks to read (although I did take breaks at the quarter and halfway marks to read other shorter books). The physical hardback became a bit unwieldy around the middle, but was seemingly better to handle nearer either end.

The plot is excellent. There are so many threads going on, wrapping things up while still setting up new avenues to explore in later books. It ties in well with the wider Cosmere series with a bunch of little Easter eggs, and still tells a compelling story.

The story takes place over 10 days, and that gives a really nice structure, and helps with following the passage of time, which sometimes I struggle with in novels. This also gives much more opportunity for chapters in the gaps between, and we explore some other characters and get to learn more about them and their motivations, which helps flesh out the world.

Despite it ultimately being a war story, Sanderson does excellently to have enough parallel storylines moving that this aspect never feels dominant in a way that I would hate to read. The battles are well described in a way that I could actually follow, which I often struggle with.

I found myself most invested in one strand though - following two characters on a quest which they didn’t really understand, and seeing them grow, and learn about themselves and their world along the way.

It’s an absolutely great way to wrap up the first half of this epic series, and leaves me waiting impatiently for more stories in the cosmere (although I’m also glad of a break after so many pages!).

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25th January 2025

The Hardy Brothers find themselves radio presenters, a job that seems to require surprisingly little training, and then naturally find themselves investigating a new crime - pirate radio. I’m not sure that really fits the 90s era, but that’s where we are.

First up, this had some of the most surprising language choices of the series. Yes the earlier stories were racist, and sexism pervades the series, but those weren’t surprises to me, as they are well known issues with these books. This time out though we have one of the main characters using ableist and homophobic slurs, which feels very unusual (although it is the 90s, so not unusual in society at large).

The aside, the plot is quite a fun one, and makes good use of Chet for light relief. It explores businesses, technology, career choices, and a new type of crime - making it quite an educational adventure too.

So all in a mixed experience.

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18th January 2025

I read the other two Johnny Maxwell novels, which follow this, as a child, but somehow have never ended up reading this, despite consuming the vast majority of Terry Pratchett's novels since. This then presented itself to me in a charity shop not long after discussing it with a friend, so home it came with me to be read.

It's the tale of a generic pre-teenage nerd at some point in the late 20th century, who is content to play counterfeit video games until suddenly it doesn't seem much of a game any more.

There's a lot going on in the story. It seems to somehow collect the youth experience of the time, which feels very relatable, but also to wrap it in discussions of the ills of the world from loads of different directions, all of which still feel very relevant today.

Pratchett's abillity to build a world in the background, never explciitly telling us things, but still painting the picture, is really clever and I feel like I might need to come back to this book again to capture and digest more of it.

Really good storytelling, and I'm glad that I occasionally get to experience these nuggets of Pratchett's writing tht I've not experienced before.

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