28th June 2025

A fun little (free) short-story set in an inn, where a group of adventurers has found two of their number dead in the night.

It took me a few pages to get my head into the narrative, but once there it flowed smoothly. The only thing I found slightly tricky was that the character's speech was written with impecable spelling, but then described as heavily accented, and I had to replay in my head to get it sounding right.

I get the impression that this is an introduction to a character that will be making more of a mark in the author's forthcoming third cosy fantasy, so I'm looking forward to that.

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28th June 2025

This was one of a stack of books I picked up with very little thought based on the cover, and with no idea of the story or themes contained within. Yet somehow it worked out and appealed to me.

It's a historical novel, set in the late 19th Century, mostly in a smaller English country house, where Florence arrives to take on a book repair job. There's a bunch of mystery to the characters, and to the setting, which slowly unfolds amid various traumatic and affirming experiences.

I found the narrative surprisingly accessible - it was easy to read, and easy to step into alignment with the main character, who despite her intelligence is quite naiive about a bunch of things.

There are some moments where bad things happen, but they aren't portrayed with graphic detail and so while still unpleasant to read about, its definitely the effect that is focussed on rather than the events themselves.

I enjoyed reading it, but somehow not quite enough to be five-star level, though I find it hard to put my finger on what exactly it was that didn't grip me as much as it could.

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28th June 2025

I hadn't realised there was a fifth book in the Indian in the Cupboard series until I found my 90s copy of the original novel, and started to re-read them. So unlike the first four books, this one is entirely new to me as an adult.

Set very shortly after the fourth book, Omri puts together a plan to use the magic in reverse, but as always there are lots of unforeseen complications.

I have mixed feelings. I'd always felt that the series ended well with the previous book, and this felt a weaker end. I found it surprisingly tense to read - there were a lot of dangers, and some that I thought were being foreshadowed which didn't come to pass, and so I was ready for more, worse things to happen.

It feels like the author had picked up by this point on some of the problematic aspects of writing about native american characters, and that this book was trying to reverse some of that and call out problematic aspects in Britain's historical treatment of other cultures. Which while a positive change, felt quite forced and slightly out of keeping.

I kind of wish that I hadn't learnt about this book, and could have left the series ending where I remembered.

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21st June 2025

The third Conrad adventure sees our human and feline heroes visiting Manchester, where there’s a lot going on.

Three or four plot lines collide to bring this together, one of them darker and more brutal than I was really looking for in this series, which I’d enjoyed because of the more lighter nature of the mystery in book one.

The narrative remains fun, with lots of in-jokes, although I can’t tell if we’re close to reaching the line with some of them where they are becoming cliches rather than punchlines.

I think though that, like with the second book, I’d love to see Conrad take a bit more of a key role. He steps up in a few places in this novel, but it feels like he’s become more of a gimmick than actually being necessary to the plot.

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21st June 2025

Onto book four in my Wheel of Time re-read. There's a lot going on, and we open with a contrast to the previous book by skipping around the various main characters fairly quickly. After a while though, this settles into long chunks of the book following a particular character, and I found this quite draining, and that I wanted to get through it to get to the other characters. I think for me, the jumping between them works better as a style for keeping my attention.

This feels like the book where the author has realised it's going to be more books than he thought to get to the end of this story, and so things slow down a bit. There's more world to explore, and that's very much what's happening here. One storyline takes us off to learn a new culture, their entire backstory, and set up stuff for future books. Another storyline finds another culture to explore, and provides an action setting for two characters who I felt got a bit of short shrift in the previous book. And the third takes us back home to see how things are changing and provide key character and world growth.

It's one of the longest books in the series and really felt it. Particularly once I'd passed the halfway point it felt a real slog trying to get through to the end - I really wanted it to be over faster. And yet I'm already craving returning to the world and getting on with book five.

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14th June 2025

I loved Janice Hallett’s other novels, and so when I saw she was writing one aimed at a younger audience I felt like I needed to read it too. Although it’s clearly targeted at children, there’s absolutely nothing that makes it any less readable as an adult.

For those new to Hallett’s work - this is a novel like a ‘found footage’ movie. Siblings Ava and Luke discover a box of old documents, and along with them, we read through the documents to uncover a story from forty years earlier. The entire narrative is told through these documents, framed with a text message conversation between the young siblings.

I raced through it, and loved every moment. Hallett’s ability to craft these stories is astounding, and as usual there’s so much going on. I’d recommend this to every child who loves reading mysteries.

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14th June 2025

I have been a Terry Pratchett fan for many years, and now occasionally find myself able to pick up one of his earlier novels that I’ve not yet read. This is the earliest.

It’s the story of a young hereditary ruler of a planet in a universe of Humans and non-Humans, struggling as he’s caught between two different destinies, and also his grandmother.

Although it’s short, I found it a challenge to read. It feels of its time in many ways - there’s a dense style to 70s science fiction and fantasy that I find hard to navigate, and I think Pratchett at this point was early in his learning curve for what would become his later style. It’s also ahead of its time in many way as well - there’s elements of the classic turning of things on their head, which he comes back to again in the early Discworld novels. There’s also a surprising number of things that later turn up, recycled and repurposed, in the Discworld series.

It was an interesting read, but I think if I’d started reading here instead of with his later novels, I’d probably not have come back to Pratchett, and would have missed out on his other brilliant output.

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