Mandy

I have so much to say about this book but I'll try to summarize it into a few points:

1. A lot of the concepts in this book was illustrated with the dichotomy of “westernized” and “non-westernized” people as a shorthand for developed and non-developed societies, which I found dated (despite me reading the latest revised edition published in 2004) and bordering on offensive. Based on this alone, I might've given the book 1 or 2 stars.

2. The science in this one was well summarized and generally engaging. A lot of it was not new to me and which I had learnt in Physiology classes back in university, but I appreciated some concepts on a deeper level given the way Sapolsky explains it. Sometimes the technical jargon can get a bit heavy and my eyes would glaze over if I was reading the ebook, and in times like these I much preferred the audiobook. I would've given this aspect 4 stars.

3. A special shout-out to the last chapter about managing stress, which I found exceptionally well done compared to the rest of the book.

I find that there's been not enough said about Point 1 in particular in the reviews for this book so I'll devote a bit of my review to calling that out.

A huge part of this book is concerned about how far human society has evolved compared to wild animals but a lot of our physiological stress responses hasn't quite caught up with that. There's even a motif through this book about a zebra escaping from a lion on the savannah, which lends to the title of the book and is a way Sapolsky uses to illustrate what we have evolved to do (short-burst fight or flight physiological responses) compared to what we actually do in this time and age (utilizing what is meant to be short-burst responses but dragging that out into prolonged stress responses to human society things like mortgages, job security, anxiety over our long-term health, our children, etc.).

All of that is well and good, but what I raise issue with is how Sapolsky basically divides humanity into two halves: you're either “westernized” or “non-westernized”. If you're “westernized”, you live in the most advanced frontier of humanity and your society has developed far along enough that you're dealing with high-end jobs and therefore high-end stressors. This book is written about and for you. If you're a “non-westernized” person, then you're literally not far from that zebra being chased by the lion on the savannah. Here are some quotes to back that up (from the 3rd revised edition published in 2004):

”If you're a human, having enough food and water for this meal, but not being sure where the next meal is coming from is a major stressor as well, one of the defining experiences of life outside the westernized world.” (Ch 5)

”Stress-induced glucocorticoid secretion works roughly the same in all the mammals, birds, and fish..and it has only been in the last half-century or so that westernized versions of just one of those species had much of a chance of surviving something like a stroke.” (Ch 10)

So yes, if you're from a “non-westernized” part of the world, you're definitely going to be so poor and living in the wild that your “defining experience of life” will be not being sure where your next meal is going to come from. You also would have not much of a chance surviving a stroke because of course the healthcare in your society is likely to be non-existent, given how backward your society even is. Do you even have a society or are you just troops of animals living in the wild?

Another example of this casual racism is found in Ch 9, where Sapolsky talks about stress and pain. He zooms in on how acupuncture, a traditionally East Asian medical technique dating back thousands of years, has been found to release opioids to help patients deal with pain. He notes that “Western scientist” had heard of it and “[dumped] it into a bucket of anthropological oddities—inscrutable Chinese herbalists sticking needles into people, Haitian shamans killing with voodoo curses, Jewish mothers curing any and all disease with their secret-recipe chicken soup.” OK, already eyebrow-raising but at least he acknowledged that they were dumping it into a bucket, although I would raise issue with how these are written off as “anthropological oddities”. “Western science” hasn't yet figured out how they worked or bothered spending money researching into them but that doesn't mean that they're entirely nonsense just because they originated from a non-Western/non-white society.

But I haven't come to my point about this chapter. The concern here is about how to tell if these techniques really were objectively efficacious or if they were some kind of cultural placebo, where the people within these societies have been raised to believe in the efficacy of it and therefore derived those benefits from them, even if they were objectively useless. Sapolsky then talks about a “prominent Western journalist” (see the continued emphasis on ‘Western') being administered acupuncture in China for pain relief after an appendicitis surgery: ”He survived just fine. Hey, this stuff must be legit—it even works on white guys.” I quote this verbatim and Sapolsky doesn't even seem to be writing this in any kind of satire. Non-Western techniques are only legitimized when they work on “white guys”. No matter how many countries and people have benefited from them in the past thousands of years, it's obviously all bogus until “white guys” or “Western science” says they aren't. This language and concept is just so extremely problematic in this time and age.

So... I won't go into the actual science of the book beyond what I summarized in my points above, because there're plenty of reviews already that talk about it here. I just wanted this review to focus primarily on the points that probably a lot of people even today would glaze over but which I really think shouldn't be ignored. The book's science is solid and engaging, but my enjoyment of the book overall was dampened significantly by the casual racism peppered through the book.

Pretty fun reading this one again. This one concentrated a lot more on the politics and relationship dynamics between the characters, but that's fine. I was definitely also slightly annoyed by everyone's fixation on the doctor at the center of the mystery here, Dr John Cristow. He didn't really feel like all that, but for some reason he had not one but three women trailing after him, at least two of which were intelligent and certainly out of his league.

Anyway, it made for an entertaining read but I find that I enjoy Christie's works where the mystery is more of a structured puzzle, aka And Then There Were None or Five Little Pigs. This one was definitely not within that category, but it was OK.

I did also kind of enjoy how there was a bit more focus on the romantic development of two characters which made for a pretty satisfactory ending.

Overall, decent fun and a serviceable mystery. Not one I'd recommend as a starting point to Christie, for sure, but definitely a good one for when you just need a bit of a Christie fix.

So this book was fine. Going in, I already knew I wasn't going to be the right audience for it, seeing as I was just okay with Rogerson's other book, Sorcery of Thorns. Although since I had read Sorcery of Thorns earlier and with much more hype on my part, and had then gotten disappointed, I went into this book with my expectations much more managed, which actually helped me enjoy it more.

Isobel is one of the best portrait painters in her town of Whimsy, and so she is constantly patronised by the fair folk, or fairies, who are incredibly vain and love seeing themselves represented on canvas. The relationship between fairies and humans is both mutually beneficial but also steeped in distrust. When she is approached by Rook, the autumn prince of the fairies, to paint his portrait, Isobel seems to make a grave mistake that might cost him his reputation. She is swept off by Rook to stand trial in the autumn courts but along the way face threats and dangers from unexpected quarters.

Things I liked about this book: the world, the fae, the lore and rules governing these people (they perpetually use glamour to hide their true appearances, which somehow have a lot to do with rotting wood and other plants, they cannot tell lies, they must be polite, and if someone bows or curtseys to them, they must return the favour). I'd have loved the book even more if these curious rules were further explored and explained, but alas, the book is more interested in the romance between Isobel and Rook to do that. I liked how fairies are so completely fascinated with human Craft (basically anything that creates things, like painting, cooking, tailoring) as well as their complete inability to undertake them (Rook literally almost dies when Isobel hands him a cooking pan). I liked the different fairy courts and would've loved to see more of the politicking between them.

What I didn't enjoy: I wasn't really compelled by any of the characters except perhaps the goat-kids, March and May, whom we unfortunately didn't see enough of at all. Also, interestingly, Gadfly - I called it right from the earlier chapters that he was orchestrating everything all along. Although it was the Alder King who was the main villain in the end, it was really Gadfly who was one level above that. I didn't particularly care for Isobel or Rook. Rook was wasn't too annoying, but we barely know much about him as a character/person besides whatever related romantically to Isobel. I was borderline annoyed with Isobel quite often, she seemed to flip-flop between all kinds of ideas and emotions a lot, and she was just way too dramatic about everything. Since I was annoyed to indifferent about the two main characters, it was really hard for me to get behind the romance. Furthermore, the attraction between Isobel and Rook happened too quickly for me and I just wasn't convinced by their chemistry throughout the book. The dramatic moments were really cringey for me.

Some parts in particular just felt a little laughable, such as when our two main protagonists are apparently being threatened by another character, and their only way out is to “stop loving each other” (not a quote, it's just so hilarious that I felt like I needed to quote it). There was some rationale behind it in that it was apparently against some kind of law that fairies and humans can't love each other while still remaining as both fairy and human, but man...

Whole book spoilers (and more about Gadfly): Gadfly's talent of seeing the future could've been put to way more interesting use in the plot, imo. There didn't seem to be a huge point to him having such a talent except perhaps to orchestrate the whole plot that he did, but there's so much more potential there. I had expected him to be the mastermind villain in the end (which turned out to be the Alder King) but that actually made Gadfly much more interesting. Instead of being a straight up villain, we don't really know what his true motivation is in the end. The revelation of him having "lured" Isobel and Rook to do all his dirty legwork for him as well as what he said at the end about how the spring court will hopefully get its turn ruling the fairy world one day makes me think that maybe he has a bigger plan in motion. If this book was gonna be a series, I'd expect to see Gadfly definitely play a huge sinister role at the end of it all. Even as a standalone, at least Gadfly's presence kinda makes the ending slightly greyer and more interesting than just a straight up happy ever after.I also kinda wish Isobel had been Rook's ex-girlfriend but enchanted so that her memories were altered and blocked. She thinks she's a 17 year old human girl living with her aunt, but she's actually an immortal fairy living with a jailer/caretaker whose mission it is to keep her memories from coming back for whatever reason. It'd be a lot more interesting than just a straight up "super-old immortal being kidnaps and falls in love with teenage girl" plot anyway.

Overall, this was a short and decent read. Some parts were cringey and laughable, but the world and some of its lore was pretty interesting.

This reminded me a bit of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies but with Sherlock Holmes instead. Sherlock Holmes rewritten with a supernatural twist, and with a personality shift in several of the major characters. I'd give this a 3 stars because while it was entertaining while it lasted, I felt that more could've been done to really hook the readers into the “new” twists of the overarching plot. I somewhat enjoyed myself whenever I had the book open, but I never really felt a push to go back to it when I was on a break, which is why I took much longer than usual finishing it.

I wasn't too mad at the personality changes of our main characters, but I think a lot of the original charisma was, perhaps deliberately, lost in translation and there wasn't enough new interesting-ness to make up for it. Instead of the bungling sidekick that Dr Watson usually is, he's now actually astute and is the one making the deductions attributed to Holmes in the original stories. He's supposed to be a reader self-insert in being the only one in the main cast who is new to the whole supernatural thing and trying to figure things out as he goes along. Given that he is supposed to be pretty smart now, it seems contradictory when he completely makes some pretty big mistakes which he's also constantly pointing out to us - Beginning the book with saying that he had accidentally caused the end of the world felt like it was setting Dr Watson up to be in that “bungling sidekick” stereotype, so I was a little surprised when he started solving cases with more gusto than Holmes was. Then we have, at the end of the Charles Augustus Milverton story, him admitting again in hindsight about the oversight he made. - so this constant flipping between smart and not-so-smart was pretty confusing to me.

Holmes probably had the biggest personality flip of the lot. While I think the original Holmes has become such an enduring figure in popular imagination because of his sardonic razor-sharp wit and his almost sociopathic aversion to societal norms in favour of his intellectual pursuits, the Holmes we have in this one is emphatically neither of those things. From the get-go, we see that he is very much not in the line of deductions and crime-solving when Watson is the one puncturing holes in his weak lines of logic. At first I had thought that perhaps it was because in this one he was going to actually have some kind of magic powers up his sleeve to explain his deductions but that didn't seem to be the case either. In fact, Holmes in this one reminded me a bit more of Bertie Wooster from the P. G. Wodehouse stories - indolent, irrelevant, even though ultimately well-meaning. His one power that floats him through this book is his ability to somehow mysteriously vanquish demons in other realms by ingesting them, or something. I felt like this ability wasn't well explained enough in the book to make me feel like I wanted to know more about it.

Overall, I had a decently enjoyable time with this book. It had a number of moments in it with some great humour but for a first book in a series (and I do think that there is an overarching plot behind this, even though it is presented in the chronology of the Sherlock Holmes short stories), more could have been done to show the magic system and the supernatural realms that's supposed to be the differentiating factor of this retelling.

Do I really need to introduce Jeeves? If you haven't read it, read it. If you've read it, you already know why this has such mass appeal, even 90 years after it was first publshed.

Most of the Jeeves short stories (and arguably most of Wodehouse's humourous works) follow a certain formulae: our narrator, Bertie Wooster, gets into some entanglement or mess because he's bungling and silly. His valet, Jeeves, swoops in to save the day through some roundabout method that has everything put back into its place with oddly satisfying precision, and along the way he always manages to fulfill his own agenda without Bertie even realising it, like finding a way to get rid of a particular clothing item that Jeeves disapproves of, or to resume a trip that Bertie had earlier cancelled and which Jeeves had been keen on going.

Wodehouse's humour is legendary. It's honestly a pretty scathing reflection on the careless superficiality of the British upper class of the 1930's, but it's still hilarious to read today. With such names as “Cyril Bassington-Bassington”, you just can't take a lot of things seriously with Wodehouse, nor should you be. Bertie is your regular air-headed childish foppish gentleman who relies entirely on Jeeves, who is in a conventionally lower middle-class position as valet, to run his life and solve his problems because he simply doesn't have the mental capacity to do so. As the reader, you are on the outside seeing Jeeves literally twisting Bertie around his little finger, and Bertie is happy to let him. Not only Bertie, but even his upper class foppish friends or his dragon-like aunts have come to rely entirely on the indubitable competence of Jeeves.

Slightly unrelated to the book, but it is testament to the perfection of the casting choices of Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves that I read the entire book with both their voices in my head. I intend to go catch up on some of their Jeeves episodes, which are no less iconic than the stories themselves.

Maybe a bit closer to 3.5 stars. This was entertaining enough, although I feel like Edgar Allan Poe had better ghost stories from this period.

The first two stories, “The Green Tea” and “The Familiar”, had very similar themes and in fact made me wonder whether it was a progenitor to describing schizophrenia, what with the central figure in each story suffering from persecution mania, hearing voices and seeing entities. This was more so in “The Green Tea”, where the protagonist's persecutor is invisible to everyone else, not the case in “The Familiar”. Even the third story, “The Justice of Harbottle”, felt a bit to do with hallucinations driven by a guilty conscience.

The last two stories were markedly different, and therefore more interesting. “The Room in the Dragon Volant” read more like a thriller and a mystery rather than a ghost story per se. Kinda felt almost a bit like The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe or even in some parts like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The most famous story in the collection has got to be “Carmilla”, however, which is well known for having inspired Bram Stoker when he was writing Dracula. It deals with a vampire legend and shares a lot of similarities to Stoker's later work. Being a short story, it's also got a lot less suspense. What struck me the most about “Carmilla” was how much same-sex undercurrents it seemed to have, whether intended or not by Le Fanu. I know the standards for displays of affection between women back then were quite different, but I do believe the extent to which it happens here is beyond the norm, which was also remarked upon numerous times by the protagonist herself.

Overall worth reading if you're into Gothic horrors, but imo I don't think any of these will really haunt me for long.

Maybe 3 to 3.5 stars. Entertaining enough, but overall riddled with so much time-period-specific issues that are too prominent for me to sweep under the carpet while reading with my modern lenses, and everything/everyone felt like a gender-role caricature, not even just a stereotype.

d'Artagnan is a young Gascon who travels to Paris to fulfil his life's ambition - to be part of the Musketeers. Along the way, his letter of recommendation from his father to the Treville, the Captain of the Musketeers, is stolen by a mysterious man. As such, d'Artagnan is instead assigned to the King's Guards, but becomes fast friends with three musketeers that he meets and fights along the way, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Their friendship tides them over the various challenges and plots that they uncover being laid out by the Cardinal Richelieu and his own guards, who have historically been the enemies of the Musketeers.

There's really not much to say in terms of plot - everything feels rather episodic in nature (which probably makes a lot more sense given that it was serialised when originally published) and there isn't really an overarching hook to it all, except maybe a vague sense that the four friends are defending themselves against various hidden enemies.

The biggest issue when it came to reading the book was how much the characters felt like caricatures of gender stereotypes of that age. The three (or four) musketeers come across as huge tools overall. They randomly gamble precious horses and equipment away for no good reason, randomly fall in love with any pretty face and then come up with schemes to try to sleep with said women, or just spout a ton of misogynistic philosophies. In the opening few chapters, d'Artaganan was willing to duel with anyone who judged him for the colour of the horse that he sits on.

The female characters were decidedly worse, either being entirely too easily won over by a few sentences of professed love from men, and then becoming massively attached to them to the point of aiding and abetting their nefarious schemes against other people (both men and women), or being ridiculously evil and villainous. Surprisingly enough, the main villain in this story was probably one of the female characters and not, in fact, the Cardinal or Rochefort as I had gone in expecting. She is described as entirely lacking in any sort of feeling, and, of course, being only a woman, she falls back on her womanly wily ways of utilising temptation and seduction to lure all these good, honourable men to their downfalls. It's not an accident that she's compared to your classic serpent more than once.

So if it wasn't enough that I couldn't find myself rooting for any one character in the book, I also couldn't root for any relationship in the book either. Almost every romance in the book is extra-marital and almost always founded on either insta-lust or avarice, in the case of Porthos sticking with his (married) mistress for the sake of accessing her husband's riches. Of course, the narrative points out and laughs at this said mistress for being old (50+ years old) and not handsome, and she is described as being a complete sucker for Porthos.

Possibly the main relationship of the book, d'Artagnan's love for Mme. Bonacieux, the young wife of a middle-aged mercer, is founded on a classic “love at first sight” moment. Aside from perhaps two or three meetings in which they barely spend any time getting to know each other, they barely meet for most of the book, but yet so much of the plot is driven by their “relationship” which is hard to believe. It also makes it hard to root for when, throughout this time, d'Artagnan isn't impervious to the charms of other women, and actively courts and sleeps with them. It is only when he realises that his other amours aren't quite who they seemed they were that he suddenly recalls his love for Mme. Bonacieux.

I can't help comparing this book with the Count of Monte Cristo, which was the first Dumas I read and not too long ago. While I thought there had been problems with female characters in COMC, it wasn't quite as bad as in this one. I get that this was all written in the 1840s and I generally try to close one or even both eyes to these time-specific issues (which I did for COMC in rating it 5 stars), but the ones in this book were really hard to ignore for some reason. Further, I felt like COMC had an overarching plot that I could get really invested in and every chapter felt like a purposeful step towards an ending that I was really interested in witnessing. This wasn't the case for The Three Musketeers though, which felt like episodic adventures of four man-boys.

Oh man, what a fun, fun read. This tickled all my love for theoretical astrophysics, philosophy about the human condition, and just pushed all of those to the extremity of imagination.

I've not watched the movie myself, but it was also interesting to note that Clarke co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick on the film, while also working on the novel. Most books and films come one after the other, I think this is my first time coming across a book that is tied so closely to its filmic counterpart.

It's not difficult to see how much the movie Interstellar was inspired by 2001. The story beats are almost identical, although it diverges in its ending. It is the story of a human being who tumbles his way through space towards Saturn, where he finds something beyond all human imagination. The film 2001 has become so iconic that it's hard to know what would constitute a spoiler or not, since so many of its scenes have been widely reproduced and paid homage to by big name directors of today.

This isn't so much what I pictured for a sci-fi novel because it's very much us in our modern world, and perhaps even more realistic today than it was back in 1968 when it was first written, because we've achieved some of the technology Clarke envisioned in this book (in fact, the iPod was named after a line from the movie when it was released in 2001), and have gotten several steps closer to the wilder bits of Clarke's imagination. This book/movie was released in the age of the Space Race, and a year before humans landed on the Moon), a momentous time in human history but also in a time before a lot of technological advancement that we are familiar with today. Some of the things that Clarke envisioned turned out pretty accurate (he correctly predicted that the global population would hit about 6 billion in 2001), and things like the NewsPad devices in this book might have been the inspiration for our ubiquitous iPads today. Some things surpassed even Clarke's imagination - he described the tally of Jupiter's moons as being unbelievably past 30, but we've now discovered 79. He also thought of Jupiter having a surface at all, when it is now common knowledge that Jupiter is a gas giant that doesn't have any kind of rocky surface.

This book was fairly short and goes by really quick, but manages to concisely explore the astrophysical theories that it sets forth. It's engaging enough that I blazed through it in a couple of days. It mixes some beautiful descriptive passages of space travel through our Solar System (entirely from Clarke's imagination since we would only have had very basic and rudimentary photographs of the planets at the time, which makes it all the more amazing), and an absorbing mystery through time and space with several twists and turns.

Because it's so short, I'd really recommend it to just about anyone, but especially those who love theoretical astrophysics, philosophy, and just a good ol' sci-fi mystery. The movie might be polarising in the way it was shot, but I feel that the book is more universally appealing in its storytelling and conveying its ideas.

This book is formulaic. It's fairly predictable. The characters veer towards one-dimensional and there's hardly any character development throughout the story.

And yet, I loved it.

I can't explain it, but A Countess Below Stairs just has some unexplainable charm that caught me off guard.

The way I like to think about it, is that the book feels like almost like the embodiment of Anna Gravinsky, the main character in this story. She's every bit of a Mary Sue as you might imagine (innocent, beautiful, nice to everything and everyone, somehow gets into everybody's good books), and I typically despise Mary Sue characters with a passion, but I just can't find it in me to hate Anna. Anna is almost like that wide-eyed little girl that never quite grows up and who sees the world around her as in a fairy tale, and that's exactly what this book is like. The story has that sort of child-like simplicity and wonder to it that even though you know how things are going to go down before you're a few chapters in, you just somehow can't help that soft spot you have for it.

Not to mention, Ibbotson's writing is a delight to read after having waded through so many commercial romance paperbacks before this. There is none of that insta-lust (not a single mention of nipples, though I can't say the same for breasts) and the plot isn't so completely absorbed in the burgeoning sexual tension between the two main characters. The chemistry that springs up between Rupert, Earl Westerholme, and Anna, Countess Gravinsky, is actually believable (although I would by no means call anything about this book ‘realistic').

Don't come into this book expecting realism, historical or otherwise. You're not going to find it here.

All in all, A Countess Below Stairs was an extremely feel-good book for me despite its shortcomings and I enjoyed it thoroughly. This was the first time in a long time that I ended the book with an, “Aww!” because I wanted more, and heaving two long sighs consecutively because the child in me wants to continue reveling more in the innocent, bare-faced positivity that permeated the whole book.

The interrupted wedding scene at the end was a downright riot. Even if my experience with the book had been bad (which it wasn't), that scene alone would've made up for it all. I've never seen a better parody of Jane Eyre. I had an inkling that shit would happen, but this was far beyond anything I had been expecting, and I gotta give Ibbotson mad props for that.

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

What a book. It was Dickens but also not really Dickens. This book, imo, is my best enjoyed for its abstract ruminations about the brutality of humanity that is ubiquitous through the social classes, rather than waiting for the plot to kick in tbh.

Gone are Dickens's signature grimy sights and sounds of the poor working class of London, replaced instead with an even grimier and bloodier countryside of France. In place of his very-English plots, we instead get something revolving around the French Revolution, which is almost a little out of character for Dickens (at least based on my own poor knowledge of him). This book is also tremendously more violent than his usual, but that's perhaps unavoidable given the subject matter. But what still makes this very much a Dickens novel is his unwavering interest in examining the class wars that precipitated the Revolution.

The Revolution, of course, took place more than a century before Dickens was writing, making this essentially historical fiction. Not that it matters since his plot is not concerned with the social niceties or customs of the 1750s, but the actual historical moments of the Revolution.

The overall theme that human beings are just awful no matter what class you are is a little depressing but honestly not unjustified given our track record in history. Dickens did a pretty masterful job at showing the apathy and lack of compassion that the nobility showed to the peasants, which then precipitated the Revolution characterized also by an identical apathy, lack of compassion, and even a tyrannical bloodlust from the peasant classes.

There were plenty of parts in the book that seemed a little excessive and meandering, but ultimately it was generally enjoyable because of Dickens's hard hitting commentary. The first third of this book was actually surprisingly witty and satirical, a little Austen-esque in the sharp barbs and jabs that Dickens takes at his own characters and which I don't usually associate with his writing.

The plot itself is pretty straightforward and if I were simply to read a blurb on it, my reaction would probably be, “That's it? How did this take so many pages to say?” But it's also about how Dickens wrote it. No part of this book embodied this better than the very ending. Without spoilers, I'll just say that while I had pretty quickly guessed how the plot was going to resolve itself so there was no anticipation or tension for me, Dickens still managed to hit me in the feels anyway by the sheer force of his writing.

Dickens has always been a hit or miss author for me as I don't completely jive with his plots or writing style but I'm happy to say that this one is definitely shaping up to be one of my favorites from him.

Man, I wish more romance novels was written like this one. This book is the epitome of slow burn romance and while I could wish for a slightly earlier resolution (more on that later), I still gotta say I loved the slow burn. For all its supernatural and period trappings, this was at its heart (hah) a novel really about two people trying to fall in love from a great distance, and how they overcame each hurdle along the way.

The writing was indeed beautiful and while it probably wasn't particularly true to a 18th century writing style, it was just elaborate enough to set the tone but without being distractingly obnoxious about it.

But the best part of this book is really its character work, and especially surrounding our protagonists, Henry Coffey and his secretary Theophilus Essex. Finally, we have a romance novel that isn't just about insta-love or insta-lust. We have time to get to know our protagonists slowly but engagingly. We see their initial relationship, the coldness and austerity of Theophilus contrasted against the bouncing cheerfulness of Henry, and we're there on the journey as the ice between them thaws.

The side characters are really just afterthoughts here but I have no complaints about that. This is a romance novel after all and I have no issue with the romance taking all the time and attention in the story, rather than sacrificing development time just to build up side characters.

The ending was satisfying enough, although I did have some issues: I actually would've preferred it if Henry and Theo had instead gotten together perhaps around the 75% mark or so instead of right at the end. While I enjoyed it, I didn't just want to see them physically get together at last by the end. I wanted to see how they would navigate through the idea of being in a relationship, with one immortal who is hardly used to being with anyone at all and another man barely past his mid-20s who is only just coming to terms with his sexuality and then learning about vampirism and the world of magic. Plus, both of them have to somehow reconcile themselves with the fact that their relationship kinda sorta started off as that of an employer and his secretary. That's a whole lot of stuff to work through and unlikely something that gratuitous sex can just magick away. I'm personally also invested in not just the way a relationship starts but also how it continues, and would love to see that in more romance novels. However, that doesn't quite detract away from the merits of this novel and I'd heartily (hah) recommend this to really just about anyone who loves some slow burn romance.

Oh my god. I've only read one other book by Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X) and it was really good, but this book really cemented my impression of him. I feel like he's the modern Agatha Christie, coming up with fresh murder mysteries with plot twists you never see coming, leading the reader down a wild goose chase but then ending off with reveals that always feel earned.

Malice gets off almost to a meandering and formulaic start. You think you know where this is going. Somewhere down the line, you start to realise that there's a reason why Higashino uses different perspectives and modes of narration in every chapter, and that “unrealiable narrator” is a huge thing in this book. Halfway through, I thought I had the solution figured out, what with all my knowledge and experience with Agatha Christie. What I hadn't counted on was Higashino actually planning this for me, the reader all along. Dear reader, you are as much part of the mystery here. By the end, I was left slack-jawed and yelling in disbelief as Higashino dropped the bombs on me and revealed how much I was led down the garden path as the characters were. That's amazing, I haven't read a mystery that has made me do that for so long, since I first read Christie novels.

I don't really want to reveal too much about the plot of this book except I'd recommend going into it completely blind. It's easy to follow and so satisfying to read. I'll certainly be reading more from Higashino now, and probably more from this Detective Kaga series as well.

I'm feeling a 2.5 - 3 ⭐ with this one. Overall the book was fairly engaging when the action started, but I wasn't really invested in any of the characters except maybe Ezra, although he started feeling a bit like your regular YA tortured hero-prince halfway through.

There were certainly a ton of cliches used here - I predicted correctly that Leah was gonna die, that the Prophet would turn out pedophilic, that he would somehow try to marry Immanuelle, and that Immanuelle would somehow turn out OP witchy by the end. It all kinda feels like regular Judeo-Christiany cult tropes, and I'm generally just not into that. I'm not offended or horrified, just not that excited about it. I also feel like i've read about an almost identical cult in Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, also led by someone they called Prophet.

The action did keep me going though, which is how I blazed through most of the book in a day. I was a little confused by the ending bit: Why did the Prophet wanted to marry Immanuelle at all? What were his motivations for doing so? If he lusted after her cos she reminded him of her mother to whom he had been betrothed, why didn't he seduce her sooner since he showed no qualms seducing Leah at that young an age? If it was power play, why does he need to marry her at all when he's already arrested her as a witch, has her in his dungeons and can do whatever he wants with her?

Overall, this was fine. It wasn't super annoying or boring, but neither was it particularly memorable or refreshing or had any thing to say. If you're into cult-ish horror, then this might be worth checking out.

I first read this one ages ago, so even though this is a re-read, I pretty much went into this one without an idea of what the solution was. I had a vague recollection of the solution halfway through, though, and turns out my memory was better than I expected. Still, this was a great and entertaining read.

Though this seems pretty Egyptian on the outside, what with the title and the Egyptian-looking setting on the cover, the story is very much all-English (and a little bit American). There isn't much of Egypt in this one besides the names of the locations that the characters go to, which is a shame considering this book was inspired by Christie's own trip to Egypt with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. Christie herself became an archaeologist in later life!

Poirot in this one was at least very much involved in the mystery from start to end, which I enjoy a lot more than other stories where he just dips in in the last 30% to solve the mystery. We also meet some very memorable characters like Linnet Ridgeway, Simon Doyle, and Jacqueline de Bellfort. The love triangle between these three isn't anything fresh but I thoroughly enjoyed how much the emotions of guilt and betrayal popped off the page.

Even though I vaguely remembered the solution halfway through, this was still a pageturner for me. I stayed up hideously late because I couldn't stop reading it. There's something magnetic and so easy and even comforting about Christie's writing and the way her mystery unfolds.

I also went to look up the cast list of the 2022 film just to see who they would cast in each character. I have to say it was a pretty stellar list (without having actually seen the movie to judge their performances). Gal Gadot and Letitia Wright in particular being Linnet Ridgeway and Rosalie Otterbourne seemed very well-casted. Arnie Hammer, actually precisely because of all the sleaziness and controversy surrounding him at the moment, was also an ironically good fit for Simon Doyle as well.

Though perhaps not as mind-blowing as Murder on the Orient Express or the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile is definitely a quintessentially great Christie to read and re-read, whether you're new to her or a long-time fan.

I'll give kudos to Christina Lauren's writing, which drew me in from page one. Their tone was modern, fun, light-hearted, with just the right amount of inside jokes for the social media generation, without seeming like they were trying too hard. The entertainment value of their writing is probably worth a whole 2 stars from my rating already.

I liked that this was one of the very few romance novels out there with an Asian-American male protagonist. I liked that there was just the right amount of Korean culture incorporated in it without going too over-the-top but also without completely ignoring it. All these factors combined made the book more than a sum of its parts. It was fun and I think that's what kept me going, speeding through the book in what is, to me, record time.

But things have to be said about the two protagonists. While they certainly weren't as annoying and cliche as romantic protagonists could be, but I kinda found myself wishing that they were... more. Despite all their quirks, it still kinda felt like the protagonists were generally one-dimensional. Hazel is a quirky girl and Josh is a nice dude who likes crazy. That pretty much sums up the entire characterization arc.

Another thing I wasn't so hot about was the way they were thrown into each other's paths again. The whole “we are going to be male/female best friends!” thing fell super flat for me, because they were clearly attracted to each other from the start (no matter how many times they tell each other they're not) and I didn't feel like they were close in a platonic way. Every time they drew closer to each other, it felt like there was always sexual tension there that you, as the reader, just knows will get explored at some point. Perhaps it's a personal preference, but if we're doing the best-friends-to-lovers thing, I'd like to see a very, very clear friendzone happening before attraction sets in, rather than it having been there from the start.

Last but not least, the ending...
If it hadn't been for that ending, I may actually round this book up to 4 stars. The ending felt rushed as hell! Josh and Hazel hadn't even gotten to the point of verbalizing their feelings for each other (although a lot of HINTS were made) before wham bam, suddenly Hazel's pregnant from the very first time they had sex. Talk about bullseye, eh? Sure, this situation could happen and has happened before. But what comes next makes things even worse. We are somehow shuttled forward in time where we meet Josh and Hazel having a date night, before going back to his empty house to have sex on the wooden floor all over again (really?). Finally, we get to find out that Josh and Hazel are not only happily married, but have 2 kids and are expecting a third. A very conventional, almost cheesy, tableau of happy married family life plays out. End scene.REALLY?!Are we really expected to believe that Josh and Hazel had a happy marriage life having gotten pregnant just 2 months after they started sleeping together, and before they actually started dating proper???? It's not to say that this is an impossibility, but to not even acknowledge that this is a thing, that there would've been hard times and arguments and struggles to overcome to get to where they are at the end, and to make it seem like it's effortless and easy to get from infatuated sex to happy married couple. I can't imagine if the readers who actually worked their butts off for their relationship when they get surprised by an unexpected pregnancy way, way too early on.

this book is really hard to write a review for because much of the time i felt like i was sort of skimming over the surface of something that could've been really juicy or impactful, but never really quite dipping through and giving me that oomph that i was waiting for up to the last page. i know that the English people are stereotyped as being very reserved, reticent, and bury an ocean of emotions underneath a placid surface - this book seems to embody that image exactly, down to the very ending.

Mildred Lathbury is a “spinster” at just slightly above 30 years old who finds herself enthralled by her new neighbours/flatmates, Rockingham and Helena Napier. she suspects Helena Napier, an anthropologist, to be attracted to a fellow anthropologist, Everard Bone. to complicate things, Mildred's close friends, the pastor Julian Malory and his sister Winifred, have their lives turned upside down by their new flatmate, the fashionable and enigmatic Mrs Allegra Gray. a lot of criss-crossing interactions and attractions ensue.

having devoured a lot of 18th and 19th C English literature that centers mainly around the domestic or neighbourhood society, the everyday life and the gossips of people's relationships being the main action of the day, i feel like i'm in a generally good position to appreciate this type of plot, although i can absolutely understand why a lot of people might find it just straight up boring.

i think the main issue with this book is that it kinda just dips its toes into various things but doesn't really quite take the plunge. there's just a bit of social commentary, but not really. there's just a bit of satire, but not really. there's just a bit of romance, but not really. and even in the ending, i was expecting at least some full-blown confession from Everard Bone, or *at least* some kind of well-rounded ending but NOPE, we just kinda have Mildred vaguely agreeing to help him out with his academic research, and it's a super vague indication that it's likely they're going to end up together even though he never once explicitly said anything along those lines.

while this wasn't a hard book to get through, and i was interested enough to know what happens at the end to keep up with the book all the way, when i was done with the book i felt like i had been left high and dry. i had a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction by how a lot of things were portrayed and resolved.

i still gave this book 3 stars though, because the characters were just vivid and humourous enough that i laughed out loud sometimes. the writing was just that bit satirical enough that i smirked to myself sometimes, especially when it comes to Mildred feeling a little despaired about being known as the lady who always had tea prepared when a crisis happens. the plot and the set-up were generally good, it's just that i felt like it was never pushed past a critical point in order to deliver the most impact on the reader, and it was a bit of a missed opportunity.

In all good conscience, I don't think I could give this book more than 3.5 stars if I really tried, so I'm leaving this as 3 stars. It was OK. I had a fun time. But there were so many loopholes and convenient bits to the story that it kinda took away from the overall mystery for me. I also felt like the premise of the mystery wasn't as strong as the first one, but some of the formula is still there (with Horowitz finding a way to somehow make himself the bungling sidekick through the entire investigation who accidentally spills the beans to the wrong people, and also somehow being a victim by the end and landing up in hospital).

When I finished the first book, it was with a bitter taste in my mouth about Daniel Hawthorne, the series's primary investigator, and primarily about his homophobia. I'm honestly not sure what was the whole point of adding this little character trait in. It kinda felt like a way for Horowitz to signal his “woke-ness” by telling off Hawthorne everytime he makes a derogatory remark about gay people (which is thankfully not that often through the series), but at the same time Horowitz writes himself as such a weak-handed side character that it just doesn't feel like it opposes the sentiment as strongly as he should. Plus, there is really absolutely no reason why Hawthorne's homophobia should be an element at all. It doesn't serve to forward the plot or the mystery or even to develop any character since we don't really know much more about Hawthorne even after 2 books. I don't think readers usually give abrasive characters more than a book's duration to redeem themselves, tbh.

The book feels almost a bit like a vanity project for Horowitz. Writing himself in as a character means we're forced to listen to his musings about his past projects, his inspirations, all the different TV shows and books he's ever written or been interested in, the people in his life, etc. I won't deny that the gimmick in itself is pretty interesting, where he blurs the line between fiction and reality all the way to even the Acknowledgements page right at the end, but at the same time I can't help wondering what's his objective here.

I'd probably still continue on the series because, as I said, it's serviceable and fun enough as a palate cleanser in between reads, but honestly not sure how this series is going to end up.

4.5 stars. This book is truly not for the faint of heart. It was confusing, it was wild, it was bewildering - and yet, I had an absolute blast. I've never read anything quite like this series, simultaneously befuddling me at every turn but yet more engaging than most books I've read. If you enjoyed the first book, you would quite likely enjoy this one - but be warned that you'd still be confused as all heck for most of it.

If you already enjoyed the first book, there was probably just something about the writing or the story or the world-building that clicked for you. This series and Muir's writing is definitely not for everyone, but if it clicks for you, you probably would be hard pressed to find a more stellar example of what she does well. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the extremely unique voice in her narrative, a blend of almost grimdark fantasy with black humour all delivered in the tone of high-schoolers somehow.

I'm also the sort of reader who's pretty OK to just let the story go on even if I'm not completely understanding what's going on and trying to catch the main gist as I go along. This served me particularly well for this book. It's common for fantasy/sci-fi books to be pretty obscure for the first 20-30%, sometimes even up to 50%. But this book... this book read like a fever dream for a whopping 70% of the book before you get any kind of clarity on what on earth is happening. I can definitely see that not working for a lot of people, but I was just enjoying myself so much with the narrative voice despite not having a single clue what was going on. Also, be warned that a lot of this book uses the second-person narrative.

Behind it all, there's a really fascinating world and story that Muir is building here. It's just sometimes hard to have a good grip on what the world is actually all about because we see it through some very convoluted perspectives. Nevertheless though, I have always been pretty satisfied with how the stories conclude for both the first book and this one, there's just enough of a pay-off to make the fever dreams clearer and less of a hot mess, and just enough of a cliffhanger to make you wild for the next installment already.

Spoilery thoughts: I felt like what really pulled me through the first confusing 70% was how beautifully it was done that we always just almost touched Gideon but never did, and the way the narrative and Harrow and every other character always seemed to just dance around Gideon's name just made the ghost of her feel even more real despite the absence. When Gideon eventually did come back, I never realised how much I missed her narrative voice until just then.I probably missed the answers to some of these from the confusion of the ending but: Who the heck is Wake and why is she a Commander and why is she so involved with just about everyone in the First House? So was it also established that she was also the Sleeper? And why was the Saint of Duty trying to kill Harrow through the whole book? Who was Anastasia/Annabel? Did we find out who the Body in the Tomb was? Why did Augustine and Mercy go all that length to conceive Gideon?

I very certainly will continue this series.

Originally published on Unravellations Reviews.

I borrowed this from my friend because I was interested in finding out more about the Borgias. The television show aside, any one who has studied or taken an interest in history or early modern Europe would not have been able to avoid the mention of the house of Borgia, more specifically Lucrezia Borgia, who has gone down in the annals of time as a femme fatale. Otherwise, you may have heard of Cesare Borgia, widely speculated to have been the inspiration for the figure of Jesus in paintings (a highly ironic premise, to say the least, considering his real personality and misdeeds). Nevertheless, the Borgias have been renowned for some reason or other through the centuries and I was curious to find out why.

The book begins with a long and rather tedious introduction into the Catholic church. It wasn't immediately apparent to me why they had to go into cardinals and Popes and the convocation of electing a new Pope when one died. I have to say, I almost gave up at that point. But I persevered and finally saw my first Borgia mentioned a few chapters in. Roderigo Borgia was an up and coming cardinal, handsome and knew where to make his alliances. The book continued plodding on about the politics within the Catholic church, none of which was particularly memorable to me. I also got very very confused with all the Italian names mentioned. Finally, finally, when Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope, that's when the real action starts.

Unlike previous Popes, who would masquerade their illegitimate children (vow of celibacy, remember?) as their nephews and nieces, Roderigo Borgia, or better known as Pope Alexander VI, paraded his illegitimate offspring publicly. He boosted his eldest son Cesare in the profession of the church, making him a cardinal, and somehow or other bestowed titles or negotiated advantageous marriages for all his other children. Cesare later resigns his cardinalship and concentrates on being the military general of the church, a post which allows him to sleep around more freely than he could as a cardinal. He marries, but spends most of his time away from his wife, sleeping with whoever he wanted and constantly contracting syphilis. The Pope himself also had his fair share of syphilis throughout his life. Through the book, Cesare impressed me with being something of a dickhead. He has no hesitation murdering, raping and plundering whoever or whatever village he saw fit. When he sacked various cities in Italy in the name of the church, the atrocity of the crimes his soldiers wreaked upon the local natives made me very uncomfortable. Young girls being raped and then murdered, or women who were raped and then robbed of their jewellery, getting their fingers chopped off if they refused to give up their rings. ALL THIS MADE ME VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. Worse still that all the perpetrators of this violence was closely associated with the Catholic church.

Also, part of the reason why I was interested in the Borgias was because of Lucrezia. Her name has reached a level of fame that neither her father nor her brother has, and I was curious to know why. I don't know if the author was particularly biased towards her, and I probably should read up more about her from other authors before I form a more solid opinion on her, but she appears to have done nothing in the least bit as heinous as her brother and father have. She marries at least 3 times, her first 2 husbands ending up either deposed or murdered. But she's not the one who plots to depose or murder them. Her second husband, in fact, was apparently murdered by her brother because the alliance with him no longer served a purpose. According to Hibbert, Lucrezia was mad with grief from it, but there was nothing much she could do, given the limited amount of infleunce women had at the time. There were rumours of incest between her, her brother and her father as well. It does seem a little strange to me that her brother, being as violent and tyrannical as he is painted to be, should have such a soft spot for his sister, even going out of his way to visit her when she fell severely ill after a botched delivery. It also seems strange to me that Lucrezia, despite probably knowing that her brother was behind the murder of her husband, should still remain so close and affectionate towards him. But well... I guess we'll never know. Even if Lucrezia was guilty of incest towards her brother and even her father, I don't see it as a crime remotely on the same level as the violence and tyranny that Alexander VI and Cesare wreaked upon Rome and Italy at the time.

After Pope Alexander VI's death (with descriptions of his gruesome funeral), things went quickly downhill for the Borgias. Cesare made the mistake of attempting to ally himself with the next powerful Pope (discounting Pius III), Pope Julius II, who has long held a grudge against the Borgias for exiling him. As a result, the Romagna empire that he had built for himself went crumbling to the ground within a short span of time and he eventually died in battle. Lucrezia did not long survive him.

All in all, the book was uncomfortable to read but did give me a much better idea of the Borgias. I would recommend sticking it through till after Roderigo Borgia gets elected Pope. It does get better, I promise. I am interested in finding out more about the Borgias, but I don't think I'll read this one again.

Finally, one of the greatest mysteries of my life has been resolved. Namely, why I hadn't seemed to be able to get into Discworld despite everything pointing to it being entirely up my alley.

Turns out, I was just reading the wrong books as entry points into the universe, and Mort has finally rectified all of that. I cried laughing at this book and I'm now a budding fan.

Mort is your average, gangly, awkward teenage boy who just happens to have caught the eye of Death himself to become his apprentice. Unfortunately, being the reaper of souls (or at least carrying out his duties while he has his days off) isn't quite all it's cracked up to be when hormones get in the way, as they usually do with teenagers.

The irreverent humour in this book was on point and just hit the sweet spot of all that I enjoy. I laughed so much at this book that even my husband got curious about it and has since put it on his own TBR. It's such a good mixture of irreverence and philosophy.

‘And he goes around killing people?' said Mort. He shook his head. ‘There's no justice.'Death sighed. NO, he said. [...] THERE'S JUST ME.

BEGONE, YOU BLACK AND MIDNIGHT HAG, he said. [...]''Oo are you calling a midnight hag?' [the cook] said accusingly...MAY ALL THE DEMONS OF HELL REND YOUR LIVING SPIRIT FI YOU DON'T GET OUT OF THE SHOPT HIS MINUTE, Death tried.‘I don't know about that, but what about my bedwarmer...‘IF YOU WOULD CARE TO GO AWAY, said Death desperately. I WILL GIVE YOU SOME MONEY.‘How much?' said the cook, with a speed that would have outdistanced a striking rattlesnake and given lightning a nasty shock. [...]

Some jobs offer increments. This one offered - well, quite the reverse.

I didn't really like Margaret Atwood's writing style in Oryx and Crake and I'm not a huge fan of it here, but I have to say there are glimmers of enjoyment in the writing in this book.

I've never been a dystopia fan, but there is something chilling about the realism of some aspects of Gilead that might very well happen in our world, any time in the near future - all this despite the fact that this book in itself was published almost 2 decades ago.

“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”

Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.

Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.

“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”

So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.

“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”

Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.

There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”

Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.

3.5 stars. Overall, I really love this overarching world which a lot of T. Kingfisher's series is set in. I did enjoy the whole dynamic between our motley crew in this one too, but felt that more could've been done with the clocktaur plot and perhaps with a bit more politicking.

This story is so much of a continuation of the first instalment of the series, Clockwork Boys, that it feels like you're hopping on to a moving car when you first start. There's a very helpful prologue at the beginning to catch new readers up to things, but I still feel like I could've done with a reread of Clockwork Boys, which I've read many many months ago.

Interestingly, what I enjoyed most in this book is the little glimpse we get into the world of the gnoles, their strangely rigid hierarchy, and even the language that they get. Kingfisher teases in her post-credits that we might get a book about Learned Edmund in the future, and if he's going to go on some gnole-ish adventures to write his book, I'd be very interested.

I fairly enjoyed the slow burn romance we got between Slate and Caliban in this one, but it grated on me a little by the end. I didn't like how Slate responded to certain plot events which moved things along with their relationship. In further detail: I was fine with her mourning for Brenner and being mad at Caliban for it, but it seemed like she was mad at Caliban just because he had pushed her aside while on his mission to get at the demon, and not so much because she had witnessed him killing Brenner? It was a hard thing to witness and I was fully behind Slate having to have some time away from Caliban to process things, but the motivation and reasons for her avoiding Caliban just seemed like the wrong ones to me. I didn't like how she held it over Caliban's head in the end before they could finally had a fight about it and reconcile by the end.

Personally, I prefer the other Kingfisher books I've read by her (Paladin's Grace from the Saint of Steel series, and The Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking - both of them set in the same world as Clocktaur War), but that's not to say that this book is bad by any means. I enjoyed it and would still recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good steampunk fantasy with a dash of humour and romance.