With words like “complete destruction” and “catastrophe” echoing around its definition like rabid World War Z zombies, it’s hard to see an apocalyops as anything other than an expansive, overwhelming, world-ending event. It is, in other worlds, no small thing. Quite how small it isn’t comes home in full force Continue Reading
Books
The beguiling, entrancing beauty of YA fantasy All the Stars and Teeth
SNAPSHOTAs princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer ― the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it’s never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, Continue Reading
Book review: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Who are we without our memories? Are we better off? Diminished markedly or does our present state of being and our innate sense of self make up for any perceived deficiency caused by the loss of an lifetime’s worth of accrued experiences? It’s a weighty question indeed but it is Continue Reading
Book review: The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames
A title like The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna might lead you to suspect that this remarkably-involving novel by Juliet Games is one whimsically quirky moment after another, a tale of one woman staring death in the face multiple times and somehow living to tell the tale. But Continue Reading
Book review: Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan
Humanity, well most of us anyway, like to think of ourselves as a laudably progressive lot, constantly pushing up living standards, lengthening lifespans and generally behaving ever more like the inclusive, caring, beautiful people we like to think we are. But as Chen Qiufan’s magnetically-readable novel, Waste Tide (translated by Continue Reading
Book review: DEV1AT3 by Jay Kristoff
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD BUT I DO MY BEST TO LIMIT THEM, TRUST ME The apocalypse may not seem like the best place to ask the big questions of life – who am I? Why am I? Who are my real friends and why? – but in Jay Kristoff’s pedal to Continue Reading
Book review: The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol #BastilleDay
One of the great joys of plunging into a great deal of French literature is its capacity to be both resolutely true to life and yet quirkily magical at the same time. It’s not an easy balance to pull it off, and while The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Continue Reading
Christmas in July … Reading Paddington and the Christmas Surprise
Paddington Bear, who first appeared on 13 October 1958, courtesy of creator Michael Bond, in the children’s book A Bear Called Paddington, is precisely the sort of person (and he is in every way that matters) I would want to do anything and everything Christmas-y with. Innocent, free-spirited, determined despite Continue Reading
Christmas in July … Reading Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
It’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. But ask anyone, even those of us who are so enamoured of the festive season that refraining from decorating in early October takes an iron will and ridiculous amounts of self control, and they will tell you that Christmas Continue Reading
Book review: Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi
No one ever handles life quite like they expect to, nor the way triumphantly-inspiring feel good Hollywood tales laud or cajole you. That’s partly because life is unpredictable daring you to ready yourself for its almost wilful twists and turns but because we are imperfect beings, our heads full of Continue Reading