Methods of Dyeing

Title: Methods of Dyeing

Author: B. Mure

Summary: In Ismyre, on the eve of his lecture, the renowned botanist and master dyer Professor Detlef is found dead in the university gardens. As the local constabulary begin their search for the culprit, a strange detective arrives from outside the city to help solve the crime. In a place where things are never as they seem, will Mary the university custodian be able to help the mysterious investigator uncover the truth?

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: This is the fourth book in Mure’s Ismyre series, and it’s just as good as all the others. Put simply this books is a gorgeous, quiet, and funny murder mystery.

The gorgeous part cannot be understated. I love the artwork so much. It’s both casual and precise, detailed but not overwhelming. The line work seems deceptively simple and expresses so much, while the colours are simple with a limited palette, but used so perfectly. It all comes together to make such peaceful pieces that make me feel calm. I get lost in the art.

I’m still amused by the title, which is a perfect pun, as the murder victim is a botanist and master dyer. The two main characters and mystery solvers are a detective we never learn the name of, and Mary who discovered the body. Mary is also the cutest freaking frog ever. Their partnership is wonderful and seeing Mary evolve over the course of the story is lovely.

All the books in the Ismyre series are political in one way or another, which is one of the many things I love about them. This book plays on institutional power structures, working around and within them, and individuals rocking that boat in small ways.

A fifth book in this series will be out later this year, and I’m already looking forward to it. I want to be lost in Isymre again, and again… and again.

Floating Hotel

Title: Floating Hotel

Author: Grace Curtis

Summary: Welcome to the Grand Abeona, home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and the very best views the galaxy has to offer. All year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last word in sub-orbital luxury—and an absolute magnet for intrigue. Intrigues such as why are there love poems in the lobby inbox? How many Imperial spies are currently on board? What is the true purpose of the Problem Solver’s conference? And perhaps most pertinently—who is driving the ship?

Each guest has a secret, every member of staff a universe unto themselves. At the centre of these interweaving lives and interlocking mysteries stands Carl, one time stowaway, long-time manager, devoted caretaker to the hotel. It’s the love of his life and the only place he’s ever called home. But as forces beyond Carl’s comprehension converge on the Abeona, he has to face one final question: when is it time to let go?

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: After loving Curtis’ first book, Frontier, of course I was going to jump at the chance to read her second one. And a book set on a hotel spaceship certainly sounded like something I would love. As the five star rating gives away: I did!

Like Frontier, this book is heavily character driven. We meet a new character each chapter, dipping into their world and their story. While it was the main character’s journey that helped string the previous book’s chapters together, in this book it is the hotel, Abeona. Each chapter gives insights not only into the characters, but the hotel. You could argue the hotel is the main character.

All the characters are great, in that I loved learning about them, but did not love everything about them. They were flawed, and that made them so real. Every member of staff ended up stuck there by accident and chose to stay on purpose. Their love for the hotel and each other was beautiful and, like each of them, imperfect. I wanted to see more of characters who didn’t get their own chapters, too. Reggie, Mataz… Nina.

The non-staff characters were more hit and miss for me. Some I warmed to while others I didn’t. Though they all had something to add to the bigger plot weaving between the chapters, it was the staff and their connections to the hotel and each other that I enjoyed the most.

Talking of the plot. It was slow at first. Small hints at something. Then several somethings cropping up. Not all of which mattered to the main thread, but all fed into it. It was the last 100 pages or so where things really got going, and only the last 25 where all the threads pulled together. I love the part of a story when everything comes together.

The end was extremely bittersweet. I knew things weren’t as simple as they seemed and that my man Carl was working some kind of ploy. The outcome for Abeona and her staff wasn’t as safe and happy as I had hoped, but it wasn’t as dire and bleak as I had feared, either. It was sad and hopeful and perfect. I want to follow the hotel and join it on its next adventure.

Cosmoknights Book Two

Title: Cosmoknights Book Two

Author: Hannah Templer

Summary: Plucky mechanic Pan has finally escaped her dead-end planet, building a new sort of family with the rebel gladiators, Bee & Cass and the mysterious hacktivist Kate. They’ve even rescued a princess… but what if this process has her own ideas? Whatever happened to Pan’s childhood friend Tara? And if they become galactic fugitives, will the pressure of life on the run threaten to tear them apart, just in time for the biggest heist of their lives?

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: I absolutely loved the first book in this series and was itching to buy and read the second. I wanted to finish my previous book before starting this one, but every time I thought about this book I made a grabby hands motion and got very excited. It was just as amazing as the first, if not better.

This book starts off where the last one ended and I was so ready to get back into the story. The focus was heavily on the characters’ relationships and development. Having agreed to work together, they need to figure out what that looks like—what their goals are and how to achieve them. Cass, sill my favourite character, is resistant to change while her wife, Bee, is in desperate need of it. The mysteriously cool Kate has her own angle on their shared agenda (and I still have my suspicions about her past). Pan is the most passionate and empathic, wanting to do the best by everyone. And newest addition Scottie has to reassess her own views and place in the world.

Seeing this group of women with different histories, different priorities, and different views come together to become a family and work together was a delight. I love them all. While the story and what they’re fighting for is important and driving the plot, it is them as people that drives the heart of the story.

And the art. The art. It is just as bright and colourful and fun as the last book. The way the tones and colours change with the mood of the scene. The use of text outside of speech. The exquisite composition and showcasing of negative space. The comical faces in brawls and shocking moments. Pan’s sparkly rainbow jumpsuit! Scottie’s freckles!! I could look at these pages for ages without even paying attention to the plot.

The fact that book three won’t be out for a while yet pains me, but I understand the work involved, and I will savour the wait. Because it’s going to be incredible.

The Librarianist

Title: The Librarianist

Author: Patrick deWitt

Summary: Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-coloured house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the centre. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

Behind Bob Comet’s straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Comet’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

With his inimitable verve, skewed humour, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert’s condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: I was offered an advanced copy of this book from Bloomsbury and immediately started reading. Every deWitt novel is unique in genre and setting, but consistent in exploring the human condition and I am obsessed. This—this—is how you write character-driven stories.

The story focuses on Bob Comet at various points in his life. As an old man making friends with residents of a care home, as a young man getting married and having his heart broken, as a young boy running away from home and going on an adventure. Bob is a quiet, unassuming man with a simple, straightforward life. Yet still he has a life full of stories.

“Do you know what a vignette is?”

“No.”

“It’s a story that’s too small to be called a story, so you call it a vignette. By pretending you’ve made it small on purpose, you avoid the shame that accompanies culpability.”

My favourite was runaway Bob. Eleven years old, sneaking onto public transport, making friends with an eccentric Thespian couple and their dogs, and learning to play a drum roll. Every character was fun and loveable and I wanted Bob to stay with them, growing up amongst so much life, creativity, and joy. Knowing he didn’t made that section of the story bittersweet.

I struggled most with young, married man Bob. Again, knowing how the story ended made reading it painful. And it hurt because the connection and relationships Bob has with Ethan and Connie were clearly so genuine and deep, and we’re seeing those develop while also seeing the pieces of how it all falls apart slip into place. It was exquisite storytelling that broke my own heart along with Bob’s.

What brings the story—Bob’s life—together, though, is the present day sections that bookend the others. The lessons learnt in his life, how they brought him to where he is now, gave him the ability to embrace the people and the opportunities crossing his path. How to let himself be happy.

Every person we meet, even the ones that only appear briefly and have only a few lines, have an immense amount of character. Everyone feels so unapologetically themselves, and I just flipping adore that so much. I feel it’s what deWitt truly excels at, and the thing that makes me want to live inside one of his books.

There were a couple of moments in the book that literally brought me to tears. A couple more that made me gasp in shock. But overwhelmingly this book made me laugh. I laughed so much, out loud, and without shame. Undoubtedly, the biggest laugh I had came at the very end of the book, leaving me cackling with joy and cementing the five stars I gave it.

Cosmoknights

Title: Cosmoknights

Author: Hannah Templer

Summary: For this ragtag band of space gays, liberation means beating the patriarchy at its own game.

Pan’s life used to be very small. Work in her dad’s body shop, sneak out with her friend Tara to go dancing, and watch the skies for freighter ships. It didn’t even matter that Tara was a princess… until one day it very much did matter, and Pan had to say goodbye forever. Years later, when a charismatic pair of off-world gladiators show up on her doorstep, she finds that life may not be as small as she thought. On the run and off the galactic grid, Pan discovers the astonishing secrets of her neo-medieval world… and the intoxicating possibility of burning it all down.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: Apparently space gays is my genre now. I’ve had this book on my shelf for a while, but I think it got lost amongst the other graphic novels and I forgot about it. Finally pulled it free and started reading… and fell in love almost instantly.

First of all, the artwork is stunning. Deceptively simple, but strikingly bold. The colour palettes change with the mood of a scene and offer depth in some places and starkness in others. The full page pieces are gorgeous, crying out to be framed and displayed. The diegetic sounds added in text as part of the art and the world—rather than dialogue bubbles—are brilliantly done, adding explosive action to the fight scenes and rhythmic beats of movement to the panels. I could look at this book all day.

The story is simple enough, but packed with so much action and fun and details. Cosmoknights in shining armour fighting for the freedom of princesses. It is the characters that really bring the story to life. I loved them all, but I think Cass is my favourite. She’s super cool, butch af, willing to risk it all, and her backstory is *chef’s kiss*. It’s wonderful following Pan, who is new to all this space and social justice stuff, but who takes to it like a duck to water. And Kate. Kate, who I was hoping wasn’t evil and who I have very exciting suspicions about from a couple of clues.

I was in the middle of reading this book when I found out about the next in the series coming out later this year and I need it. I can’t wait to see what this group of awesome women get up to next.

Frontier

Title: Frontier

Author: Grace Curtis

Summary: Earth, the distant future: climate change has reduced our verdant home into a hard-scrabble wasteland. Saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, travellers and gunslingers and horse thieves abound. People are as diverse and divided as they’ve ever been – except in their shared suspicions when a stranger comes to town.

One night a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet’s first visitor in three hundred years. She’s armed, she’s scared… and she’s looking for someone.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: I received an email inviting me to read this book, and with phrases like “gay space western” and “for fans of Becky Chambers” it immediately got my attention. They weren’t wrong. It is a gay space western for fans of Becky Chambers—I absolutely flipping loved it.

The story follows the Stranger (the Courier, the Stowaway, the Traveller…) as she journeys across Earth in an attempt to contact someone. At first very little is given away about who she is, where she is from, or who she is looking for and why. These details trickle through the more places she goes and the more people she meets.

We get a lot of small glimpses at such a wealth of world building throughout the book. A divide between the humans that left Earth many years ago and those who stayed behind. A post-climate catastrophe Earth and how humans have adapted to the world. A new religious world order and how and why it sprang from previous events. The tip of an iceberg of the larger world beyond the reaches of Earth in outer space. And so much more. It’s so rich and vivid and there is still so much left to be explored.

This book is most comparable to Chambers’ first book, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, due to its episodic nature. Each chapter is a like a little self-contained short story, all building a bigger picture of this Earth and those who were left behind. Threads and elements from all the previous chapters come back to add depth and plot and detail to the story in later chapters. I ate that shit up, it was so satisfying.

Every character we meet, for no matter how briefly, felt real and whole. That’s so often the key, for me, to a great book, and I envy writers who seem to accomplish it so easily. The first three characters we meet, especially, I seemed to know so quickly, in barely the first few pages of the book. And I remember them so clearly, because… well, spoilers. But every single character was so well-crafted, complex, and unique. There are my favourites who I love dearly (Hattie, Byker, Nana, Ken). There are the characters I love to hate (Seawell, mostly). And there are all the other characters in between, all adding to the world and the narrative and development of each other.

It was an easy read, always leaving me wanting more, but I paced myself in order to really make the book last. I didn’t want it to be over too quickly. By the time I reached halfway I was completely in love with the book and just hoping for a ending that did it justice. I wasn’t disappointed. The ending wasn’t too stressful or dramatic, but wasn’t underwhelming either. It was perfect, and continued to pull details from throughout the story to tie it all together.

I am more than a little excited for Curtis’ words to be out in the world and already can’t wait to read more of them!

The Book of Koli

Title: The Book of Koli

Author: M R Carey

Summary: Everything that lives hates us…

Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognisable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don’t get you, the Shunned men will.

Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don’t venture too far beyond the walls.

He’s wrong.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: I’ve read and loved several books by Carey previously, so of course I wanted to read another science fiction dystopian series from him. Now. I started reading this book in February 2021. I finished in it December 2022. This is in no way the book’s fault! I was suffering with severe anxiety when I first started the book and was struggling to read anything. I got about halfway through when I decided to put it aside. Having more recently regained my love and motivation for reading I picked this one back up and carried on where I left off.

The first half of the book sets up what life is like in Mythen Rood, the village our main character, Koli, lives in. He has a simply life as a woodcutter with his family and his friends. And okay, so there’s a massive wall around the village, and dangerous drones that show up occasionally, and folk seem to be very wary of the trees for some reason. There is a distinct lack of technology, except among the elite few who can make the weapons they have come alive. Koli, being an ambitious young fellow, gets his hands on some tech and gets himself into trouble.

The second half of the book follows Koli outside the walls of Mythen Rood, experiencing what else there is in this dystopian world. He finds killer trees, empty villages, old and new friends enemies. And, of course, getting himself into more trouble. I won’t say too much else on that.

My very favourite thing about this book is characters describing technology and other old-word items that they’ve never come across before, but are well-known things to the reader. It’s like a guessing game. A large piece of tech hammered together out of sheets of metal with wheels inside a great big metal band and a pipe sticking out. A soft slippery cloth puffed up like a pillow. Any guesses? There are loads of them, and I love it!

Language is another great thing. Seeing how it has evolved over time or how old and unknown words are pronounced and interpreted to make sense with the words people already know and understand. Mythen Rood, for example, had a previous and similar sounding name we’d be more familiar with. Koli doesn’t know how you communicate with tech and so when he learns the word he calls it an in-their-face. This shit is freaking catnip to me, I can’t get enough of it.

There were quite a few characters, all well-rounded and flawed and real. Which makes it hard to hate any of them, though I only truly loved a few. Koli, Monono, Ursula… controversial, possibly, but I loved Sky simply for how competent and no-nonsense she is. And Cup. I knew there was something about her, from the way Koli described her. There was something more to learn about her story and who she was—she was certainly going to be important to Koli. It was towards the end of the book, when we learn a little something about her, that I legitimately squealed with joy and the rating I was giving the book jumped from a 4.5 to a 5.

I don’t think I have ever been so keen to get on and read the next book in a series. There are so many hints and clues and foreshadowing and points to connect. I have theories, and I need to know how everything comes together, when and what details are revealed, and what the hell happened in the past and will happen in the future. Most of my theories involve Ursula. She knows so much. How? Who was she before she became a wandering doctor-of-sorts? How old is she? I have some ideas. I also kind of maybe half suspect (or, at least, I want to believe) that this story is set in the far flung future of The Girl With All the Gifts. It’s a stretch, but noxious trees and enough time… let me have this.

Suffice to say I will be reading the next book in the series soon!

Gender Queer

Title: Gender Queer

Author: Maia Kobabe

Summary: In Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe has crafted an intensely cathartic autobiography about eir path to identifying as nonbinary and asexual, and coming out to eir family and society. By addressing questions about gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–the story also doubles as a much-needed, useful, and touching guide.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: This book was handed to me by my partner only a few days ago with the instruction to read it. I could have finished it in one sitting, but I paced myself and made it last three. Still very much devoured it.

A comic memoir sharing Kobabe’s journey with eir gender and sexuality, it was immediately a warm, open, and safe place e was creating with this book. By page 40 I had found several things very relatable. By page 87 I had laughed out loud numerous times. And by page 222 I was crying (a good sign for me and books, apparently).

Spanning childhood all the way to adulthood in a rough chronology, Kobabe takes us on eir path of self-doubt and self-discovery. The artwork is deceptively simple yet evocative, the designs fun and interesting, the dialogue and turns of phrase vivid and witty. It was a joy to be swept along in eir story.

I would like to think that everyone could relate to at least some of Kobabe’s early experiences, but I might be being naive in that assumption—simply because I related to parts of eir story, doesn’t mean everyone will. But I do hope those that can’t relate can at least begin to understand.

A lot of the analogies and metaphors Kobabe uses to express eir thoughts and feelings around eir gender and sexuality were liberating to my own. While others weren’t relatable to me, they did help me comprehend and sympathise with the struggles others go through.

This really feels like a required-reading book, and covers things not often discussed openly (or at all) in such thoughtful and accessible ways. I thoroughly enjoyed and high recommend it.

To Be Taught If Fortunate

Title: To Be Taught If Fortunate

Author: Becky Chambers

Summary: In the future, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the galaxy transform themselves.

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragile body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to explore exoplanets long suspected to harbour life.

Ariadne is one such explorer. On a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds fifteen light-years from Earth, she and her fellow crewmates sleep while in transit, and wake each time with different features. But as they shift through both form and time, life back on Earth has also changed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the wonders and dangers of her journey, in the hope that someone back home is still listening.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: Becky Chambers has long been an auto-buy author for me, even if I am a little behind on the reading. I finished her Wayfarers series not too long ago, and next up was this novella. In case the five star rating isn’t indication enough: I absolutely freaking loved it.

To Be Taught If Fortunate is heavier on the science aspect of science fiction that her previous books, but it is all explained in lay terms, and then built up to explore larger concepts and themes. Those concepts and themes then ultimately lead back to humanity and the big questions of life in general and. It’s just. Perfect.

The book is set over 100 years into the future, where the world’s space program has become crowd funded. It focuses on four people saying goodbye to life as they know it on Earth and heading off to explore suspected life on four worlds far away from our planet. The process involves long periods of torpor, time slipping by both faster and slower, and physical body modifications to help adjust to living on other moons and planets. Of course, it is the psychological tolls of these experiences where the true heart of the story lies.

I was fond of all four characters. All unique but all relatable in their own ways. What set them apart, what excited them, how they dealt with things, how they supported each other. It was absolutely wonderful and I could have read about them all for hundreds more pages.

What stood out most for me with this book were the emotions. For a story with a lot of science, it’s all so intrinsically rooted in the human experience and there wasn’t a section I read during which I didn’t cry. This story made me feel so much. I was almost full on sobbing by the end.

Talking of the end… well, I don’t want to spoil it. But it was my favourite kind of ending. So many questions and not enough answers. I’m still thinking about it now. About the possibilities and what they would mean.

I just really bloody loved this one, okay?

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Title: Kiki’s Delivery Service

Author: Eiko Kadono

Summary: When Kiki lands in the town of Koriko she uses her trusty broomstick to start a flying delivery service. Although the local people are a little wary of having a witch in town at first, they soon come to rely on her to deliver their parcels. No job is too big or too small for Kiki and her wisecracking cat Jiji, but some deliveries are much tricker than they seem…!

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service is one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films and I think I knew, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, that it was based on a book. My other favourite Ghibli film, Howl’s Moving Castle, also is and I read that book ages ago now. Yet still, it took me by chance spotting this book on a table in the children’s section of Waterstones to think, “Of course it was a book first,” and, “I should definitely read it.” I bought it on the spot and couldn’t wait to get cracking on it.

Having seen the film first (and several times) before reading the book, a lot of my opinion is based on its comparison to the film. Which might have been unfair to the book, if it weren’t for the fact all the comparisons and all my opinions are positive!

Immediately it’s clear to see the film captured the mood and vibe and essence of the book really well. It is light and whimsical and full of fun. Actually, the book is more of all of those things, because the film added a deeper layer to the coming-of-age aspect of the story. Which, of course, I love, but it was also nice just reading a truly happy story.

The plot of the book is very simple. Young witch makes her way in the world by moving to a new town, making new friends, and delivering things on her broom. Each chapter is a new delivery adventure. It’s so simple and so lovely. I smiled a lot while reading this, and it had me laughing out loud a few times.

I loved all the characters, but my favourite is Jiji. He’s very similar to how he is the film. Full of slightly insecure snark and fragile ego. I was hoping against hope my favourite of his lines from the film would be in the book, but it wasn’t. However, there was a line that’s not in the film that I absolutely adored. It’s Jiji’s reaction when they first spot the sea…

“What, so it’s just a big puddle?” Jiji seemed dissatisfied.

There was artwork in my edition of the book, which was also fun and full of whimsy. The pages with illustrations were definitely the ones that got more of my attention. I wish they all could have been in colour like the cover, but alas.

Having found reading a real struggle in recent years, this book was like a breath of fresh air. I don’t care that it was familiar because I’ve seen the film. I don’t care that it’s a children’s book. I don’t care that it’s got lots of pictures. I care that it’s invigorated my motivation for reading. I care that it’s made me want to pick up another book. I care that it made me happy.