Rai

An entertaining gothic with supernatural elements and a lot of Sapphic romance. The only thing that bothered me about this was the occasionally odd sentence structure and some of the txtspk going over my head. I may be a millennial but we don't all know every meme-y acronym going! The prose is written in a very conversational tone, constantly referring back to you as ‘Dear Readers' that did get a little tiring towards the end.

The story (stories) itself was engaging and suitably creepy. I enjoyed the swapping back and forth between the present and the past with the varying intricacies of the curse of Brookhants. Despite some of the meme-speak, I did find myself liking the present day chapters a little more. Yes, it is quite long with these dual-stories, but you can't really have one without the other.

Action packed intro to the world that awaits in Of Blood and Fire. I loved the dragons and the bond with the Draleid. The Knights as well. There's just enough balance to make you wonder who really is “in the right”. A couple of things that were missed in editing (word repetition, wrong name used) however I can forgive when it's been produced for free by the author.

That took an unexpected turn...Having read [b:Gunmetal Gods 55777447 Gunmetal Gods (Gunmetal Gods #1) Zamil Akhtar https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1624243972l/55777447.SX50.jpg 85052502] previously I thought I knew what to expect from [a:Zamil Akhtar 13833684 Zamil Akhtar https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1609188611p2/13833684.jpg] in this novella but it veered off on a mind-bending detour that I did not see coming. Kudos to any author who can shakes things up like this!Akhtar's prose is quick, smooth and engaging; he conjures some dark imagery and a profoundly in depth world in just 100 pages. You do not need to have read other books in the series before this. It is a 0.5 in the series, so set much before the happenings of Gunmetal Gods, with entirely different characters.We see the world from Darya's point of view, a tribal warrior trying to break through the walls of a besieged city and end the war in the name of the Shah. She is assigned to the death riders; the tip-of-the-spear vanguard designed as fodder against the defending forces. Despite facing death many times, somehow she continues to survive - is it luck, skill or a guiding hand?

{4.5 stars}

Of Blood and Fire from Ryan Cahill is a great debut, marking the start of The Bound and the Broken series, which proved an addictive read. It is a classic epic fantasy with a modern interpretation. Though this starts off in familiar territory - with 3 young men, as close as brothers, on the eve of their manhood trial, which inevitably goes awry and the village bully gets involved - it is very much worth the read.

The central characters are ones you can care about and root for. Calen, Dann & Rist are our three freshly-proven young men who get caught up in a kerfuffle with the big bad Empire after they befriend the mysterious Erik who is travelling incognito with his brother and father. After coming to the aid of their new friends, our main boys are landed in the shit and it gets worse before getting better.

Along their journey these three make discoveries about themselves and the world around them. They witness a baby dragon hatching - the first in over 400 years - they meet elves, giants, dwarves and are chased across the continent by a Fade hellbent on destroying the aforementioned baby dragon.

Without giving too much more away there are stakes, there is loss, there is wonder and awe in this book. At times there are some words used that feel a bit jarring or out of place where a more simple descriptor could have sufficed but I think Cahill shows a lot of promise. Book 2 in the series, Of Darkness and Light, is already out and the next installation is due later this year (Of War and Ruin) so you won't have to wait long to continue the story. Cahill is also planning to release a novella set in The Bound and the Broken world prior to Book 3's release to keep eager fans ticking over.

I would recommend reading the prequel novella, The Fall, as it clues you in to some of the language and magic of this world and gives a good sense of the epic proportions the main series is heading for. Did I mention there are dragons?

An Asian-inspired fantasy steeped in ancestry, obligation and magics, The Hand of the Sun King is an excellent debut fantasy novel from J.T. Greathouse and offers an alternative pace and focus to the much loved coming-of-age trope.

For my full review of The Hand of the Sun King please head on over to BookNest: https://booknest.eu/reviews/rai/2367-the-hand-of-the-sun-king-pact-and-pattern-1-by-j-t-greathouse-book-review

While I found the prose and phraseology occasionally jarring, the premise of the story is a very interesting one and I think Malerman has done well to leave a lot to one's imagination - much like the characters you aren't given all the information and you end up wondering.

The main character, Malorie, I didn't engage with very well as you see so many different facets to her in such a short period of time it is difficult to latch on to just one. The character of Tom is only presented as one version of himself so he's a lot easier to engage with.

The story itself feels quite compact and short (regardless of page counts) and the frequent ‘chapter' breaks make it easy to read a little bit in short bursts. There are better composed novels admittedly; and this one is still worth reading. If you have a completionist mentality, it might nag at you all the things that are not answered in the book. That is the point, though.

This was provided as an Advanced Reader Copy via NetGally by the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

Black Sunday follows the children of a fractured family who end up abandoned by both parents to live with their Grandmother in a poor Lagos neighbourhood. Twin older sisters Bibike and Ariyike are more in focus than their two younger brothers Andrew and Peter. The story is told mostly in first person segments from the points of view of each of the four children with one exception in a segment of Peter's where it was written in second person, which seemed like an odd choice to go against the trend of the rest of the book.

The story spans two decades of their lives growing up and trying to survive poor and parent-less in Lagos and how they each find different ways to carve out their own futures. The girls start working to put their brothers through school and University; Ariyike becoming a famous Christian radio presenter and later moving to Christian TV with the very same church who conned her father out of their family home and destroyed their lives.

Some sections seem a little stilted in the prose, however it's important to remember these are being told from the point of view of children. As the four grow up the prose becomes more smooth as the characters are maturing. The story can be difficult to digest as it demonstrates the personal suffering of this family and even moreso the suffering of the twin sisters as girls and women growing up in a deeply misogynistic, male-dominated society.

Within the blurb for the book it mentions: “the twins' paths diverge once the household shatters: one embracing modernity as the years pass, the other consumed by religion.” I had this in mind as I read through the book and I was expecting one sister to stay with their Yoruba grandmother (one does) and for that to be the one ‘consumed by religion'. However, to me it seemed the sister consumed by religion was also the one who embraced modernity - embracing modern technology and the movement of power into the use of those technologies. Each sister seems to embrace modernity in a different way and both have religion in their lives to a greater or lesser extent. It is not quite as clear-cut as the blurb might imply.

The ending of the book initially seemed a little flat to me but after thinking about it for a little while I feel it does provide what I was after, only much more subtly than I was expecting. That is a common theme with the book, there is a lot happening that is big, bold and obvious, smacking you in the face but underneath there is a lot working subtly in the background that might take you a little longer to recognise and appreciate.

This and my other reviews are on my website: Aspects of Me.

An excellent short comic from a trans artist reflecting on their experiences with coming to find and feel comfortable in their gender identity. The art style is wonderful and the story it tells is both heart-wrenching and heart-warming. This is a great comic to read for anyone who has questioned their gender identity, although it specifically speaks of a transmasc experience it will have resonance for any trans, nonbinary or gnc folk. It is wonderfully honest and quietly hopeful and a joy to read.

CW: depression, dysphoria, disordered eating, misgendering

This was a disappointing read.

To expand on that; it felt far too much like an introduction. Nothing was really explained and far too much was left up in the air. Some ‘goings on' could have been explained by totally different things, and I somehow highly doubt a ghost from the 1700s is going to know enough about used car sales & internet protocols to write some fake emails and switch recipients.

I was interested in the characters but there were no real stakes and far too much ‘deus ex machina' in effect throughout. I wanted answers and there were none. Far too nebulous and unfinished.

3.5 stars

An interesting novella that explores the tale of two empresses through the medium of oral histories passed down from an older generation to a younger one. As a story this could've easily filled a whole novel with deception, intrigue, revenge and a splash of magic here and there.

It borders a little on being an info-dump - and if this were a preface to a full novel or series then it certainly would qualify as one - which made me feel it was, at times, a little dry. Cleric Chih is the protagonist but they aren't really developed; they just listen, which is their purpose, yes, but I would've like to know more about them as opposed to looking over the shoulder of this very passive character.

This is the first of Hayes' books I've read, which I decided I really should get around to considering how many of them I own based on reputation alone. I did find myself wondering, around the 20% mark, just how much of the book was going to be set in The Pit and when "the real story" was going to start. I'd gotten the wrong impression from the blurb it seems as the whole book is in The Pit and that is the real story.

As the first in The War Eternal series and Eska is our narrator and speaks as though recounting her memories from a distant future, dropping little teasers about her life after The Pit, and this is her telling the story of her time in The Pit and her escape. Interspersed between the dank environs of The Pit - a never-ending mind where prisoners are sent to simply dig their lives away in the dark - are snapshots of Eska's childhood, growing up within the Orran Academy of Magic.

Given she's only just reached 16 years old by the end of the book, it is fair to say the entirety of Eska's childhood has been filled with pain and torture; save for the brief 6 years she spent in her quaint home village climbing trees. Tortured by those training her to be a magical weapon at the academy, only to be captured and thrown into The Pit for even more torture.

A stubborn character, self-describing as a 'bitch', Eska is not a loveable protagonist. She's angry and determined. She wants her revenge and will stop at nothing to achieve it.

At times brutal and bloody, Along the Razor's Edge feels like an origin story. Whether it is for a hero or a villain, only time will tell.

A historical and military fantasy telling an alternative tale of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. Part One is very much a coming-of-age tale compressed into the first section of this book, where Zhu successfully joins a monastery as her only means of survival and grows up there until she is ordained as a monk. Parts Two & Three are much more military fantasy focussed with new POVs being added into the mix. There's a lot of army moving, taking and losing of cities and power-plays in these parts.

The ‘fantasy' elements are quite limited altogether however, there's only a couple of aspects one could view as fantastical, most of the book is simply an alt-history story. Personally, I would've liked more fantasy and less military movements but nevertheless I can see the value in the text as is. There are some interesting questions of sex and gender that aren't too deeply probed and are not a main feature of the storyline.

Overall, it is well written and engaging. Excellent as a character focussed story as we see how Zhu changes over time.

Oh what a truly charming, wonderful, and heart-warming story. It made me smile, chuckle and tear up. I'm not the most externally-expressive reader so that really is a feat! I wasn't sure if it was going to be “my thing” as most fantasy I read is a little darker and I nevertheless fell in love with this troop of characters. I listened to the audiobook and I think that added to the charm, hearing the voices of everyone performed differently to the others and some of the children's voices made the funny moments even better. However you decide to consume this book, I hope you enjoy it as thoroughly as I did. It made a glorious bright little break from gloom of the world.

This was a bit of a weird one to rate and categorise for me. It's billed as being ‘darkly comic' but I didn't feel anything like that coming through. It's a tale of a woman who does not fit in and trying to fit in the only ways she knows how. It explores ideas of normalised behaviour within society and how these normalisations can make anyone who doesn't adhere to them feel alien or, in Keiko's example, not human.

She goes from trying to be normal based on what her family and sister want or react to, to people she's known from school, to her colleagues at the convenience store, including Shirara, who also falls outside social norms but is equally no good for Keiko.

This is a story about following your instincts whether or not that makes you appear ‘normal' and ultimately trying to shake off the restrictive expectations that are placed upon us by societal and cultural norms.

Keiko is a well-written, neurodiverse character in a story that does not focus on naming and parading her differences. The author has successfully made a sympathetic character and does an excellent job of telling the story through the eyes of someone who feels out of place and as if they don't understand the world swirling around them. Keiko's slice of normalcy as a ‘Convenience Store Woman' feels tangible and provides an excellent opportunity to explore the difficulties she faces getting on in life.

This and my other reviews are on my site: Aspects of Me.

The Silent Patient is a mystery/thriller with a twist I did not guess. That's a claim a lot of PR tends to make only for it to not be true. There are a lot of books out there that I have guessed the endings to and while I was expecting something a little different to the standard cookie-cutter thriller (my theory in the first half of the book was it would be some sort of Shutter Island switch-up) the ending was well disguised.

Alicia murdered her husband and never spoke again; Theo thinks he will be the one to “save her” and get her to talk again. They both had a tumultuous upbringing with asshole fathers, which Theo believes gives him an edge to figuring out why Alicia stopped speaking. All the while, telling us about his unfaithful actress wife, Kathy. Some of Theo's white-knighting and general attitude towards women is frustrating and disappointing, although stick with the story as it feeds into the ending.

In between Theo's narratives we have entries from Alicia's journal that she began to keep in the weeks running up to the murder of her husband Gabriel. These offer us a glimpse into the character of Alicia who - present day - is silent. It's a clever mechanism to build up a rapport and empathy with a character that would otherwise be inaccessible.

There are plenty of little twists and turns in the story along the way that will keep you guessing at what's going to happen next. It's a great read, well written, paced and with good character development on both Theo and Alicia's part. As Michaelides begins to peel back the Big Reveal, and it starts to click into place, it'll have you thinking “Hang on a second...!” before hitting you with the full secret. Expertly done.

‘A Cup of Tea...' is a clever, at times surreal, hard-hitting exploration of grief. If you have ever experienced loss, you may see yourself reflected in Lucifer as he deteriorates over a missing kettle. A kettle given to him by his mother. It is often small, surprising things, that drag us back into our grief: a Christmas card, a certain drink, the passing thought “I bet they'd love this” that jars us into remembering that person is gone. Tarzian has expressed this perfectly within A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell.

It feels almost odd to offer praise for such a raw and vulnerable piece of work. It becomes very personal as Tarzian explores specifically his own grief and mental state following the sudden loss of his mother. It feels perhaps crass to say “well done!” when reading through such intimate thoughts and experiences. I can only hope a review goes some way to counteracting the heavy imposter syndrome Tarzian speaks of that is so synonymous with creative pursuits.

There is no real resolution because grief doesn't have a real resolution. Tarzian talks about his ongoing recovery from loss and the use of Lucifer and his kettle shows that loss can surprise us and take back over. It is inspiring to see the truth laid out bare in this novella both as an exercise in recovery and as a confirmation that we are not alone in how grief can derail us. As someone who lost a grandparent this year, I found ‘A Cup of Tea...' to resonate strongly with my experiences and I found this somewhat of a comfort to see some reflection of my losses in Tarzian's words.

Whether it's through the dreamlike, chaotic sequences in Hell or the raw, unbridled, journal-like entries from the author that follow; A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell will take you on a journey through grief. At 90 pages, it is a short and impactful story that I certainly recommend as a window into grief and the toll it can take on us mentally, physically & spiritually.

From champion of Africanfuturism, [a:Nnedi Okorafor 588356 Nnedi Okorafor https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1507148868p2/588356.jpg], author of the [b:Binti 25667918 Binti (Binti, #1) Nnedi Okorafor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433804020l/25667918.SY75.jpg 45491127] novella series, is this first episode in the coming-of-age story of Sunny, an albino African American girl living in Nigeria who discovers she is a magical Leopard person - one who can use juju. Sunny has been suffering at the hands of bullies in school because of her appearance, one day Orlu intervenes and walks Sunny home. These two become friends and in doing so Sunny meets Chichi, Orlu's friend and neighbour. Chichi has a hunch about Sunny and when it turns out to be right, Sunny is thrown into a whole new world and a whirlwind of new experiences.The key to this new world is to learn. That is how you earn chittim, which is used as currency within the Leopard world. Reading a book that places such a high importance on the idea of continual learning was wonderful. Despite being a 34 year old and our protagonist being a mere 12, I was wishing I could live in Okorafor's world because even with all the scary stuff Sunny & co have to face it is a world that seems much better than our own.Sunny, Chichi, Orlu and newest friend Sasha discover they have been brought together to fight against an evil that threatens the world and Sunny finds out this threat is linked to her Grandmother's death, a woman she never knew but who holds the key to who Sunny really is.This is a brilliant story about friendship, outcasts, belonging, justice and selfhood. If you're looking for an alternative to a certain book series about outcasts in magical schools... look no further!