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I am a little late writing this month’s round up of books but I hope you can forgive me. It has been something of a whirlwind here in Sydney as my debut novel Greenteeth was finally sent out into the world! I had a truly wonderful few weeks, encompassing the final trade reviews, a fantastic launch event surrounded by friends and family, and a couple of interviews and livestreams with various great people!

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I am now drifting back to earth and catching up on my regular tasks; foremost among them my review of February’s reading. I actually managed to pack a lot of reading into 28 days, I found it a great distraction from the book release nerves! I read eight books and this is what I thought.

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Thornhedge � T Kingfisher

Short novella retelling of the Sleeping Beauty myth, told from the point of view of a changeling girl who is locking up the beauty to protect the world from her. I found this a pleasant and easy read, though not my favourite of Kingfisher’s excellent work. It contained the second depiction of Greenteeth I have ever read, outside my own, and I did like them very much, I thought my Jenny would get along with them excellently.

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Commonwealth � Ann Patchett

My third Patchett, after Tom Lake and The Dutch House and I fear by reading them in reverse publishing order I am experiencing diminishing returns! Patchett is definitely improving as a writer, and I thought Tom Lake was just great but I struggled with Commonwealth. The story follows two families that merge and then split, across fifty years from California to Virginia and back. Patchett doesn’t focus on any of the big scenes: infidelity, death, marriage, but instead looks at the inbetween times, and just mentions the headlines. I found this technique interesting in concept but in execution rather frustrating. It also took me less than one chapter to decide that the stepfather figure was my mortal enemy, and I wished him nothing but misery, and that really tinted my enjoyment of the book. I will give older Pratchett one more go, probably Bel Canto, and then I will just wait for her to put some new work out.

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Please Look After Mother � Kyung Sook Shin

Korean translation. When a family’s elderly mother goes missing in Seoul, her adult children have to search the city to find her, all while reckoning with their own preconceptions about her. Ooh this is a tough one to review! It was excellently written but quite hard to read. I really liked the different narrators voices, and the portrayal of the childhood each of them experienced. I thought that there would be a reveal that the adult children were all selfish and ignoring their mother’s life, but it was much more complex than that, and I think the end point was that no children can ever truly know their parent. The ending quite took my breath away and left me blinded with tears for a moment. A really fantastic book.

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The Last Blade Priest � WB Wiles

The Last Blade Priest is a return to classic fantasy writing but utilising all sorts of new ideas and tropes. The story is set in a world once ruled by an empire aligned with a mysterious mountain-worshipping cult but now being taken over by a new meritocratic force.Ìý The narration is split between one of the few remaining scions of the religion and a builder conscripted into the invading army. I liked this book a lot, the writing was descriptive and felt cinematic. There was a slight weakness in the character building which left me a little underinvested in their stories but I’m eager to see where the story goes next.

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Children of Time � Adrian Tchaikovsky

I switched gears from reading Tchaikovsky’s fantasy to trying his scifi with this epic universe-bending story about the descendants of a lost earth. Lightyears from earth lies a planet seeded with new life as part of a forgotten experiment to terraform new worlds. Now the survivors of the old earth are coming and will have to reckon with what was left behind. This story follows two threads: the spaceship humans and the planet bound spiders that have developed without them. I loved the spidery half of this book but struggled to really connect to the humans (classic weirdo problems). Book 2 combines the threads so I’m keen to start that.

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The Chequer Board � Nevil Shute

A return to my public access book pile � The Chequer Board follows a man diagnosed with a terminal injury who decides to find the three men who were kind to him as he lay in a prison hospital ten years previously. Then they were all at the low point of their lives and he wants to help them now if he can. The first thing to say about this book is that there are some DEEPLY racist words used. I’m talking the N-word used pretty liberally to the face of African-American characters. However, if you can get past that this is actually a pretty liberal book for its time. It was published in 1947 and features multiple mixed race relationships and marriages in a positive light, discusses the racism of the American south as a stupid and pointless evil, and even promotes as heroes the anti-colonial Burmese fighters. I enjoyed the stories and found it a relaxing read, albeit with some jumpscare slurs.

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Round The Bend � Nevil Shute

My second Shute of the month, and this was a little weirder. It follows an Englishman setting up a small charter airline in the Middle East in the aftermath of the war and the rise of the oil powers in the region. But it’s also about the charismatic mechanic he employs and the new religion that forms around him. So that’s very odd. I liked this book but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me and I couldn’t really work out what it was saying. There is some major criticism of the White Australia policy when one of the Sikh pilots can’t land in Australia or the entire baggage handler and ATC staff across the nation will go on strike. Shute accurately characterises this as terrible, but it’s a startling reminder that this was happening up until the 1970s.

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My last read of the month � Pastoral is set at an English Bomber Command base during the war and follows a romance between a pilot and a radio operator. Something I found a little frustrating was how much these two acted like dopey teenagers � but then I realised they were only 23 and they were almost the oldest people on the base! That really put things into perspective for me and I stopped expecting them to act like adults. There was a really sharp contrast between the gentle courtship and the nightly risk of death when the pilots flew off to bomb Germany. There were a few moments when I had my heart in my mouth but it was definitely worth the ride.

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January 2025 � how was it for you? I’m just so excited that we’re finally in February � which is my book birthday month!!! Reviews are pouring in and it’s so incredibly exciting to see the photos and tags on socials. Please keep them coming!

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This month seemed to stretch out forever, I barely read for the whole last week and still managed to knock out 12 books. Luckily they were almost all excellent.

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Glorious Exploits - Ferdia Lennon

Starting the month off strong with a book I meant to read all last year � Glorious Exploits tells the story of a couple of Sicilian fishermen who decide to put on a production of Sophocles� Medea acted by Athenian prisoners of war in a quarry outside the city. I love when historical fiction explores areas that aren’t WW2, the Tudors or the Romans so I snapped this up and finished it in a day or so. It’s much more lyrical than I was expecting, but overall I enjoyed the prose and the characters managed to toe the line of being sympathetic and historically accurate.

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The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie

Somehow this is the first time I’ve read this book (well, listened to) and it quickly became one of my favourites from Abercrombie. I love a book that focuses on one battle or siege and this covers just three days in the fight between the North and the Union. There are old favourites in the cast: Black Dow, Dogman and lots of new faces to love: Wirrun of Bligh forever! This was a really great read and I think that I can call the title of Fictional Character Most in Need of Intensive Therapy now. It’s Bremer dan Gorst by a country mile!

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Chain-Gang All Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

My run of unbelievable books continues with this instant classic. Set in an America only slightly worse than what we currently have where death row prisoners fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses. I really don’t read enough mainstream ‘literature� and this inspired me to occasionally trust the NYT when they say a book is incredible and pick it up. This book was so easy to read and so hard to process � I would recommend it to anyone.

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Sorcery and Small Magics - Maiga Doocy

Being an author who writes cosy-adjacent fantasy I am very picky about the genre, and it took me a while to pick this book up from my tbr pile. But on a sunny day just after New Years I packed a bag for the beach and grabbed this to read on the train. Eight hours later, sunburnt and entirely content I finished it and immediately went to rate it five stars. Sorcery and Small Magics manages to be cosy and charming but also interesting and complex � with a magic system that made immediate sense to me. I had such a good time reading this book and will reread before the next in the series comes out � hopefully on another lovely beach day.

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Uprooted - Naomi Novik

One of my all time favourite books! This is my fourth or fifth re-read and I enjoyed it as much as ever. Novik really knocks it out of the park in prose, characters, ideas, plot. Just a great time.

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The Lifecycle of Software Objects - Ted Chiang

Novella following a software engineer who develops pet AIs for a cyberspace company and then has to reckon with the consequences of raising a new form of sentient being. Very thought provoking and an easy read.

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House of Open Wounds - Adrian Tchaikovsky

My god this was a great book. I read a review that said that it was an odd choice for Tchaikovsky to follow up his fantasy take on Les Miserables with a fantasy take on MASH and that’s about half of why this book was so much fun. There’s a much closer focus on a few characters than on the previous book in the series but you still get the sense of scale, of a huge war that still has very personal effects. For the first three quarters of the book I was really enjoying the read but I didn’t think there would be much resolution. The fact that the author managed to braid every single loose end into the perfect conclusion literally blew my mind and I absolutely loved it.

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White Cat, Black Dog - Kelly Link

Short story collection. I am trying to read more short fiction and have been meaning to try out Kelly Link for a while. I found this very mixed. Some of the stores were wonderful, some bafflingly bad. Highlights for me were The White Cat’s Divorce, Prince Hat Underground and The White Road. The others were all good to fine, with the exception of the dire The Game of Smash and Recovery. I definitely want to dig into more Link now and check out some of her longform novels.

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Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell

Short children’s book about a woman living alone on an island off the coast of California after her tribe is evicted/murdered. Sweet enough account of living in the wilderness and connecting with nature with a hopeful ending that was rather ruined when I looked up the real story.

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The Angel of the Crows - Katherine Addison

Addison wrote an all time favourite of mine: The Goblin Emperor, so I had high expectations of this supernatural pastiche of Sherlock Holmes. It almost met them. It borrows heavily from both the original text and from various adaptions, so that it never feels quite original but the various magical denizens of London were laid out in an interesting way and I did like the idea of the angels as Addison writes them. My complaint would probably be that if you are going to trail that Fallen Angels are the ultimate big bad then they should really appear in the text! This book also had me exclaiming “Is anyone in this story not secretly a woman?� at multiple junctures.

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The Tricky Business of Fairy Bargains - Reena McCarty

I was given an advance copy of this book, which is due out next year, and enjoyed it a great deal. Full review to come closer to release date but definitely add this to your list if you liked Sorcery and Small Magics.

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The Company - KJ Parker

My latest Parker, but the first one he wrote under this name. I found this less enjoyable than some of his later work but a bit more thought provoking. The Company is a group of five men, once elite soldiers, now retired and somewhat at a loose end. Their old commander pulls them out of their mundane lives and takes them off to a deserted island to set up a colony. It hits all the classic Parker notes: logistics, backstabbing, competent people messing up, but there is a strong theme of the different types of destruction that war can wreak. Almost no one falls in battle but instead farmers are ruined by corpses rotting on their land, survivors never really leave the war behind and everyone is damaged. I might have enjoyed this more in a less glorious reading month but among the abundance of excellence it didn’t stand out.

Happy New Year! I’m so pleased we’ve finally shrugged off 2024, completed the first quarter of the 21stÌýCentury and moved into the real future: 2025. Now that’s proper space numbers, get me a flying car that runs on soda cans stat!

I knew going into 2024 that it was going to feel like a bit of a holding pattern. I signed my book deal back in April 2023 and it seemed like an incredibly long time to have to wait. I tried to make the most of the last year; writing my next book, working hard at my day job and spending as much time with friends and family as possible � but it still feels incredibly exciting that 2025 has arrived and my book baby is almost here!

If you’re reading this then you probably already know that Greenteeth is available for pre-order at all good bookshops, and I encourage you to do so! If you’re one of the kind souls who have already pre-ordered it and sent me your receipt for gifts I am happy to tell you that I ordered the prints and bookplates last week and should be posting them out by mid Jan. If you know anyone who wants them but hasn’t pre-ordered then now is the time as I will be closing the incentive campaign a week before publication.

Well I think that’s all the housekeeping settled, let’s move on to the main topic of this post: Books I Read in December!

I had a bit of a rushed start to the month, where I spent a lot of time driving to and from site, so by 11thÌýDecember I had only finished one book â€� the audiobook I read in the car. Happily my site work finished shortly after this point and I was able to settle into a happy twenty days of reading â€� wherein I finished another eleven books. Here is what I thought of them.

Last Argument of Kings � Joe Abercrombie

Audiobook re-read � but I had completely forgotten what happened. I am loving the First Law books so much more on this go around, but I think this is actually one of the weaker ones. The balance of the story felt a bit rushed, after the slow pace of TBI and BTAH this book really packs in another 2-3 books worth of plot, just to finish the story. I wonder if this is because Abercrombie had committed to a trilogy, as is the modern standard for fantasy books. I think a 4-5 book series to cover this storyline would have suited it better. Regardless I still enjoyed this book very much, I liked the final reveals even if they were a bit mashed together and I started listening to the next standalone book straight away.

Some Desperate Glory � Emily Tesh

A book I had been meaning to read all year and finally got around to. Some Desperate Glory tells the story of Kyr, a girl raised in a decaying spaceship populated by the last vanguard of human separatists in a future when earth has been destroyed. She runs away rather than join the breeding program, taking a captured alien with her to try and exact revenge on the aliens that destroyed her planet.

So! This is a fascinating book, and I can see why it won the Hugo. It is taking inspiration from all sorts of classic SF tropes and inverting them. I thought I knew what was going to happen from about two chapters in and I was somehow both right and wrong which I enjoyed very much. I did like how Kyr was portrayed as unlikable, Tesh really doesn’t pull back on writing her as Little Miss Fascist in the first half of the book. However I thought there was still something missing for me. ÌýThe writing, combined with the teenage protagonist, made the book feel a bit too YA for my tastes and I did think that the villains tended to be a bit too strawmen in order to make Kyr’s choices more clear cut. I would have liked a messier moral maze to really bring the whole story up to Ìýa five-star read. On the whole, I thought this was a really interesting book and am excited to see what Tesh does next.

The Dreaming Vol 2 � Queenie Chan

This is the second in Queenie’s The Dreaming manga series and I enjoyed it as much as vol 1. The story gets darker and twistier and the drawing is as lovely as ever. Definitely pick this up if you’re looking for a manga set in Australia.

Adventures in Volcanoland � Tamsin Mather

The only non-fiction book I read this month and I think I was probably not the target audience! This is basically Volcanology 101, interspersed with case studies and stories from Mather’s field trips around the world. If you didn’t know the subject matter I think it would be very enjoyable and interesting. Unfortunately as a geologist I did know almost all of it and was looking for a slightly deeper take on the topic. I would still recommend this to anyone looking to learn more from a standing start though!

Y/N � Esther Yi

This one is on me. I clearly misunderstood the blurb and was expecting a really fun soapy/crime caper about a K-Pop stan who writes deranged fanfic and stalks the object of their adoration to Seoul. That would have been a really fun book. Instead, Y/N is a contemporary and IMO overly intellectual attempt at the same basic story. If this is your thing you will love it. It is not my thing. I finished it and that was the best I could do.

Vigilance � Robert Jackson Bennett

OK now we’re moving back to some good stuff! I loved this incredibly dark short novel about an America maybe 4 years in the future, where mass shootings have been gamified into a victim-blaming, gun worshipping orgy of violence. This was really well written and felt horrifyingly realistic. It reminded me a bit of Chain Gang All Stars (review coming in the Jan blog post) which I mean as a great compliment.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle � Shirley Jackson

Next up is a modern classic. I have never read any Shirley Jackson and the closest I have come to her work is from watching The Haunting of Hill House between my fingers. I can definitely see what Jackson is doing and while I think it is very good, it’s been so often repeated that reading this original story doesn’t feel as fresh and exciting as it must have at the time. Unfortunately I think this is the inevitable burden of the trailblazer!

Red Smoking Mirror � Nick Hunt

I picked this up in a bookshop in Auckland last month (Shout out Unity Books, what a delightful store!). I was immediately interested when it was listed as Alternate History (an underrated microgenre). Red Smoking Mirror is set in a Tenochtitlan that trades with Moorish Spain and is narrated by a Jewish merchant married to a freed Nahua slave. I loved this book, it really felt as if I was walking around medieval Mexico City with the smell of xocolatl and dust in the air. I liked how Hunt was clear about the gorier human sacrifice parts of the society, whilst still showing what an advanced and graceful city it was. It felt very balanced: neither demonising nor patronising. A really good read.

Liberty’s Daughter � Naomi Kritzer

I love Kritzer’s writing, from her short stories to her political blog but this was my first foray into her novels and I was hopeful that I would enjoy it. I did. Liberty’s daughter follows Beck, who lives on board a seastead platform constructed and run by a group of libertarian separatists somewhere in the pacific. Beck does odd jobs that take her all over the seasteads and as she does she uncovers the grimier parts of the new society she lives inÌý and starts trying to do what she can to untangle them. A very easy and entertaining book that still manages to say some interesting things about class and society.

The Good Wife of Bath � Karen Brooks

Read this in a single day! I half liked this retelling of Chaucer’s the Wife of Bath’s tale. The first half of the book was very good, focusing on the day to day life of Eleanor and her various husbands and friends in medieval England. The second half of the book takes a bit of a turn and I liked that less. I also found it pretty difficult to sympathise with the way that Eleanor KEPT MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES. She marries five times and three of those men have basically the same character flaws. Every time one dies she is happy to be free of them but then almost immediately marries another dud. This was a well written book though, so I’d keep an eye out for other works by Brooks.

Best Served Cold � Joe Abercrombie

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ tells me that I have read this book before, but I had absolutely no memory of it. Honestly what a treat! Abercrombie is really cooking with gas here with the brilliant Monza Murcatto and her search for vengeance on the seven men who betrayed her. Also present are soft-hearted Northern warrior, Caul Shivers, treacherously loveable mercenary Nicomo Cosca, a pair of poisoners and a whole cast of equally brilliant side characters. In Abercrombie’s world nothing is ever simple or straightforwardly right or wrong and I just loved how the story unfurled. Continuing excellent audio narration from Steven Pacey.

The Butcher of the Forest � Premee Mohamed

Short novel to close out the year. A villager must trespass into the dangerous fae-adjacent northern woods to retrieve the children of the Tyrant who rules over her land. This was…okay! I loved the cover and I thought there were some interesting ideas in there but for some reason it just didn’t click for me. I will give it another try in the future to see if I was just done with books for the year!

So there we have it: the last 12 books of 2024. If you’re interested in everything else I read this year you can check out the backlog of posts on the blog and please stay tuned to see what wonderful reads I have in store for 2025. It’s gonna be a good year I can feel it!

I had intended to jazz up my monthly post into a proper newsletter: reviewing not just books but music and tv, giving you updates on how Greenteeth is progressing and hints at further projects. Alas I have come up against the unstoppable force of my real life job (Geologist) and have been far too busy looking intently at rocks to step up my newsletter game. So here is an opportunity for you, gentle reader, to tell me what you are interested in hearing me blather on about in next months New & Improved Version! I can chat about my fave books, authors, what being a debut author is like, how I balance work and writing. I could even, heaven forfend, talk about something that isn’t directly related to myself! Drop a comment and I shall do my best to please.

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With that out of the way let’s move on to the point of this post, what books I read in November 2024. It was an excellent batch.

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I hit a biiig reading slump in early November. I become slumped about once a year, I’m sure most readers can relate. Books you might otherwise love become difficult to wade through and you end up starting half a dozen or so before you admit defeat. I finally caved in about ten days into the month and consulted my bookshelves for the perfect slumpbreaker. It had to be a favourite, but not so beloved that it would set off emotions. Not a skinny book but not so large I got lost and had to put it down again. I considered The Goblin Emperor, an ideal slumpbreaker, but I used it for last years slump. I thought about the Scholomance series, but again, the emotions. My eye landed on two books: The Gargoyle and Enchantment. I decided to read them both.

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Enchantment � Orson Scott Card

Unpleasant politics aside, Scott Card truly is a masterful writer. His Enderverse novels have been a lifelong favourite of mine and this lesser known Time-Travel romantasy is just delightful. It follows Ivan, a Russian-American Jew and PhD student of Slavic languages (these are important attributes) as he visits the old country and finds a beautiful woman asleep on a slab, guarded by a fearsome bear. Ivan wakes the maiden with a kiss and is dragged back to the 9thÌýCentury to deal with the consequences of rescuing a medieval maiden. It is a really thoughtful and well-paced book and has just the most excellent villain in Baba Yaga. Everything has a purpose, even if you don’t see it until right at the end. I think this is easily the fourth or fifth time I have read it and I enjoyed it as much as ever.

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The Gargoyle � Andrew Davidson

From a prolific author to one who has only ever wrote one book, I fear the pressure placed on the Gargoyle by a gigantic advance may have given it impossible expectations and stymied the author. It’s such a shame because I also love this book. The nameless protagonist is a drug/alcohol addicted porn star who drives his car off a cliff during a bender and almost dies in the ensuing inferno. As he lies in agony in a hospital bed, waiting only for death he meets Marianne Engel, an artist who insists they were lovers in a past life. She begins to tell him love stories, from Japan to Iceland to Italy, and always the story of how they met before in medieval Germany. This book is somehow modern lit, fantasy and romance all in one and it always leaves me feeling content as the burned man is brought back to life, first by the doctors and then by Marianne.

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Thus ended the slump, broken by a pair of old favourites. I decided to celebrate my return to the reading world by trying something completely different!

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Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont � Elizabeth Taylor

I had never heard of Elizabeth Taylor before reading about her in Jo Walton’s reading round ups (a common source of TBR inspiration) and I was eager to try her out. This short book follows the lives of Upper Class retirees who live in the Claremont Hotel as they try to bridge the gap between their adult lives and the inevitable spiral into care homes and hospitals. It was an incredibly English (not British) read, full of quiet desperation and the subtle horrors of growing old alone. I thought Taylor wrote this beautifully and finished it in an afternoon.

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Wolf by Wolf � Ryan Graudin

A book that has been on my TBR for years, I finally picked up Wolf by Wolf and absolutely devoured it. It is a YA alt-history novel set in a world where the Nazi’s won WW2. Stop, wait, don’t move on! I moan about the only alt-history (a favourite microgenre) being WW2 but this was a really fresh take on the subject. It follows Yael, a death camp survivor changed by the human experimentation performed on her, as she competes in the annual Reich/Japan motorcycle race from Berlin to Tokyo. In between chapters you get glimpses into how Yael survived, and the people she lost along the way. I liked this book a lot, even though I am not much of a YA reader. The one thing I struggled with was the romance. I know romance is par for the course in YA but it was very unbelievable that Yael would consider falling for any of her fellow competitors during the race, given that they are all Hitler Youth. I just didn’t buy that this girl who had fought her way back to life with bloody fingernails would let herself do that. But I suppose love is a strange thing and possibly a teenage girl who had never felt it before might have gotten lost in herself. I am very keen to see where this duology goes and will shortly order the next one.

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The Husbands � Holly Gramazio

The flight from Sydney to Auckland is about two and a bit hours. That’s how long it took me to read this delightful book. I zoomed through it, laughing out loud and rubbing my chin in thought by turns. Lauren returns from a night on the town to discover a strange man in her house. Eventually she works out that her attic keeps sending her husbands, tall, short, black, white, architects, rockclimbers, each one resetting her life. Lauren struggles to decide whether to keep them, to swap them out or to give up on the idea of love entirely. This was a really smart sf-y take on the eternal problems of modern dating: stick or twist. When to stay, when to go. I really enjoyed it.

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The First Law: The Blade Itself & Before They Are Hanged � Joe Abercrombie

Another reread � this time on audiobook. These are some of my dearest friends favourite books and I have to confess I did not particularly love them first time round. I preferred Abercrombie’s brilliant Half a King series, and his later books, but these were too grim, too dark for me. I heard such excellent things about the audiobooks that I decided to give them another go and have been listening continuously as I drive back and forth to my job site for 3 hours a day. They have been a revelation. The narrator, Steven Pacey, has forced me to slow down and really take in Abercrombie’s world building, to spend time with his characters and get to know them, feel their fear, horror and ambition as they scramble through a familiarly imperfect world. This series has some of the all time best unreliable narrators, that feel so reliable you barely realise til half way through that they are so much darker and lighter than they portray themselves. I am about half way through the third and will probably be listening to this series for months to come.

October was a month spent travelling! I started with flying back to the UK for the first time in five years, popped over to Italy while I was in Europe then came all the way back home to Sydney. It was wonderful to be reunited with my family and friends if only briefly, and I was reminded of all the things about the UK I loved and hated! I definitely won’t be leaving it another five years to come back. I also launched my pre-order campaign and got my hands on the first Advance Copies of Greenteeth � holding the physical copies of my book was truly one of the best moments of my life.

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Books

Normally I would get through a book a day whilst on vacation, but I was so busy that I only managed to read five books in the whole month! They were a diverse bunch, and I enjoyed all of them.

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The Daughters War - Christopher Buehlman

This is the prequel to The Blacktongue Thief, which I read earlier this year. I absolutely loved and was devastated by this book in equal measure. It follows Galva, a young warrior, as she brings a new battalion of war corvids (ravens the size of stags) into the fight against the rampaging goblins. I have never hated and feared a fictional enemy the way I hate and fear these goblins! They are smart, vicious and totally uncaring of human life. I really felt the terror of the human armies as they battled against them and the desperation to win and survive. When I read The Blacktongue Thief I compared it to Joe Abercrombie’s First Law books, and I absolutely stand by that assessment � what a fantastic series this is turning out to be.

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Trustee from the Tool Room - Nevil Shute

Another Nevil Shute book I found for free on Apple Books! I believe this is the last book Shute wrote and it’s a classic story of good people behaving well and trying their best. The titular Trustee is Keith, a modest man but excellent mechanic, who suddenly becomes the guardian for his niece. Her inheritance is lost at sea (due to some tax avoidance shenanigans from her parents) and Keith sets out across the world to try and get it back. It’s a good read but it is a little difficult to feel sympathetic on the tax front!

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The Far Country - Nevil Shute

The second Shute of the month! This was perhaps a poor choice to read on my flight from Sydney to London as it is mostly about how bad the UK is and how great Australia is. To which I say: Hmmnnn I agree but not for the reasons you think! Shute’s main complaint is how the NHS and UK welfare state is preventing rich people staying rich and the thing he loves about Australia is that there’s a lot of meat. So, we’re not completely aligned on values! Also, he keeps describing people as dark skinned and then it turns out they’re from Poland, there are no actual aboriginal characters in this book. But hey ho different times and all that.

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Darwin's Dreampond - Tijs Goldschmidt

A non-fiction book I have been trying to track down for years, Darwin’s Dreampond is a half scientific account of the evolution of fishes in Lake Victoria, half travel account of life as a researcher in 80s Tanzania. I very much enjoyed this book; the science was easy to read, and the stories of Tanzanian life were fascinating. I’m a bit of a fish nerd (what a thing to admit) so this was right up my alley, and I learned a lot.

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Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands - Heather Fawcett

This is the second in the Emily Wilde series and this time our heroine has travelled to the Alps. I loved the developing relationship between Emily and Wendell, but I did miss the friendships she built in the Ljosland village of the first book. The Alpine villagers felt fainter and got less page time in this book. I am looking forward to picking up the third in the series where we travel back to Wendell’s kingdom!

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It has been an unusually slow month for reading. I have spent almost all of my spare time reviewing my current manuscript after receiving my editors notes at the end of August. I only managed to read three books, and I was halfway through two of them before the month even started. Luckily they were all very good.

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Unruly � David Mitchell

A review of English Monarchs from Arthur to Elizabeth I. I knew almost everything already, English history being something I was raised with, but I particularly enjoyed Mitchell’s narration. It was a very easy going, amusing journey through the centuries and I liked Mitchell’s analysis of the development of Kingship as a concept: from biggest bully to divine right by birth and back. I would recommend this to anyone looking for an entertaining read or listen, regardless of whether they ware familiar with the subject.

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Buried Deep � Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is one of my favourite writers, but I wasn’t very excited about the news that she would be releasing a book of short stories. I’m not the biggest fan of short form fiction, I find it rather hit and miss. However, I bought the book anyway and sat down to give it a go. I should have trusted Novik wouldn’t let me down! I loved all the stories; especially the little Scholomance epilogue! It really whet my appetite for the book she is currently writing and I will definitely be back to review this again!

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The Hunger of the Gods � John Gwynne

This is the second in Gwynne’s Norse inspired fantasy. I enjoyed this book very much but I did struggle with the list of named characters, at one point there was a Skapti, a Skuld and a Skald all talking at or about each other! The first book ended with all of the characters in one very remote place and it took them a while to scatter back to their respective plot lines which made the initial few chapters feel a bit slow. Once everyone started properly I found the book a lot faster. I look forward to reading the finale next month!

Winter is finally over! August is the last gasp of Sydney winter and we are now hurtling towards spring. It has been a great month of reading for me: dipping into some old friends in preparation for new favourites. I read seven books this month and this is what I thought of them.

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Siwan â€� Saunders LewisÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

This is a translated version of the play by the acclaimed Welsh playwright, Saunders Lewis. I was drawn to reading this because one of my all-time historical novels is Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman and the main character, Joanna of Wales, is the titular Siwan here (Siwan is Welsh for Joanna or Joan as she may have been known.) This play focuses on a key event in her life, her infidelity with William de Braose and his subsequent discovery by her husband Llewelyn the Great. The play covers the initial relationship between the lovers as well as the eventual reconciliation of Joanna/Siwan with Llewelyn. I really liked this play, I liked how obvious Joanna’s power was as Lady of Wales and I liked the relationships with the two men that loved her; William and Llewelyn. I would really love to track down a copy of the 1960 film of this play with Sian Phillips and Peter O’Toole if anyone knows where I could get a copy!

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Saevus Corax Gets Away With Murder � KJ Parker

The final instalment in the Saevus Corax books. I think this was my favourite of the three, and it featured all the hallmarks of a KJ Parker novel: logistics and battles and smart people outwitting each other. I really liked how Saevus was called the most dangerous man in the worldÌýâ€� that opened up a lot about how everyone else saw him that I hadn’t put together from being inside his head. I would have read more of Saevus but I still have a backlog of Parker to get through and I have every faith that there’ll be another excellent series on the way.

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Ancillary Sword � Ann Leckie

Reread before tackling Translation State. God this is good. I think I loved it even better the second time around. I LOVE Breq, she’s such an amazing character and I adore all the others too, they’re all so brilliantly drawn. The Imperial Radch is such a believable empire and yet also so foreign and strange. I also think the Presger, present in their Translators, are the most truly alien aliens I’ve ever read.

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Ancillary Mercy � Ann Leckie

More excellence! I liked this book more because of the time we get to spend on Mercy of Kalr and I always enjoy ship based narratives. What can I say other than Translator Zeiat and her fish? Darling Child Tisarwat? An all time great.

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Translation State � Ann Leckie

The newest Radch book and the most direct sequel, (Provenance has little relevance to the overall arc). TS follows a suspected child of a Presger translator as they return to the treaty point and grapple with what it is to be human or alien or anything in between. I enjoyed this book in its own right, but it didn’t quite land for me as a sequel. I liked the answers about the translators but they didn’t seem totally congruent with the Ancillary books. It was also difficult to follow Breq as a protagonist as she’s just so great. Maybe next time I will try and read this as a standalone without an Ancillary run up.

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The Year of Magical Thinking � Joan Didion

A book that is constantly recommended â€� AYOMT follows the immediate aftermath of Didion’s husband’s sudden death and hospitalisation of their only child. I think I was perhaps in the wrong place to read this book as I haven’t suffered any recent losses and while I felt for Didion it didn’t seem particularly revelatory to me. ÌýI was very moved by her relationship with her husband and it seemed long and happy. I couldn’t quite get past her assertion that she had never felt lucky â€� when she had spent her whole life in this wonderful relationship, running in the highest literary circles and making a living doing what she loved. The inevitable loss of her partner, while obviously shocking, didn’t seem to contradict the 40 years of happiness. Maybe I am in the wrong, it has been known to happen! I felt much more sympathetic about her daughter’s medical troubles. ÌýI might give some of her other essays another try as I did enjoy her writing style.

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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed � Eric Cline

I love a good history book and I was looking forward to this one. It covers the collapse of the Mediterranean Bronze Age civilisations around 3000 years ago, when every kingdom except for Egypt failed. This was really a review of previous works and papers, collated into a rough narrative and I would have liked the author to take control of it a bit more and lead me through a story. This felt like an academic book that had been marketed as pop history. Nevertheless I had a great time listening to it and learnt a lot â€� especially about the interconnectedness of the time and how advanced the people were. Ìý

It’s been a chilly July here in Sydney and I have spent most of the month running around the city, trying to keep warm! I feel like I’ve barely done any reading this month but the stats don’t lie and apparently I’ve added six new books to the count! Here’s what I thought of them.

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Marazan � Nevil Shute

My latest Shute (fre)e-book, and my least favourite so far. Marazan is an early Shute novel, following a young pilot who gets caught up in an escaped convicts bid to Ìýbring down a smuggling ring. Set between the wars and featuring the most insane narrator I’ve ever had the trouble/pleasure of reading. I cannot emphasise enough how this man is constantly drinking and getting into an aircraft for some merry japes. Totally bonkers. 10/10.

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Slow Noodles � Chantha Nguon

A half memoir half recipe book about Chantha's evacuation from Cambodia and life as a refugee in Vietnam and beyond. I was a little disappointed as this was marketed as a memoir of the Khmer Rouge but the author left Cambodia before the outbreak and seemed quite well set up in Vietnam. I found this book a struggle but the recipes did sound delicious and I'm planning a trip out to Cabramatta to try some Cambodian cuisine.

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The Last Tale of the Flower Bride � Roshani Chokshi

Highly recommended adult fantasy spin on Bluebeard. Argh! I just couldn't take to this one! I've never been much of a fan of flowery writing and this was turned up to eleven. I got through it relatively quickly and saw the twists coming from about halfway. This was very well done if you appreciate intricate writing but it was a miss for me.

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Butter � Asako Yuzuki

Easily my favourite book of the month, Butter was billed as a journalistic murder mystery but turned into an incredibly powerful state of the nation novel for modern day Japan. I loved how the friendships between women were explored, how they related to food, and to careers and culture. This was a book you have to put some effort into but my goodness it paid off!

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Whale Fall � Daniel Kraus

A scuba diver searching for his fathers remains off the coast of Monterey gets swallowed by a sperm whale. You know I had to read this. It was mostly good but, and this seems an inappropriate criticism, it came off as slightly unrealistic! I was on board for the premise but some of the twists seemed a bit much. I also could have done with less backstory, I got that the whole thing was an allegory but I wanted more whale! Great descriptive writing though.

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Love Lockdown � Elizabeth Greenwood

Audiobook. Discussion of the impact of the US prison system on those who love the incarcerated. Very interesting book, though I was never really convinced that the ''met while incarcerated" crowd were as sensible as they were hoping to come across. Definitely gave me new insight into prison life and into the ways generous family policies can help reintegration and reduce recidivism. Very interesting book.

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Happy Summer/Winter Solstice y’all! We are already halfway through 2024 and it feels like the days are slipping by faster than ever. I spent most of the month working on the roads around New South Wales, which was a great opportunity to explore the beautiful countryÌý but also gave me a little snake-based anxiety! I made it back in one piece and to cap it off I read nine books this month.

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What Feasts At Night � T Kingfisher

The second Sworn Sword book. WFAN carries on a few months after the events of the first book. I was lucky enough to hear T Kingfisher talk about this book directly and she described it as (paraphrasing) Ìýan interlude she needed to write before she could move on with the story. The protagonist â€� Alex, needs to face their PTSD, not only from the horrors of the previous book, but from a lifetime at war. There is still a solid plot and it’s a very enjoyable horror read but I think of it more as a bonus chapter or un-deleted scene in between What Moves The Dead and whatever terrors come next!

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The Sword Defiant � Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

Epic fantasy but from fifteen years after the fall of the dark lord. This is the story of Alf, a surviving hero, and of Olva, the sister he left behind. I very much enjoyed this book. I liked how you could feel the years of fatigue grating on Alf as he struggled to find the right path, and I liked how we saw what he had left behind to go adventuring. It feels very rare to have a lead character be a middle-aged mother and I loved how we saw Olva develop into a hero in her own right. There were some excellent twists at the end and I am keen to jump into the second book!

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Broken Stars � Ken Liu (editor)

A collection of Chinese SF short stories. I found this collection rather hit and miss. Some were incredibly well done and some I couldn’t finish. Still a good experience and a great way to try out some works in translation. Favourites were Submarines, The New Year Train, What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear, The First Emperor’s Games and Chen Quifan’s two stories.

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Sarah Canary � Karen Joy Fowler

Weird one! This follows the titular Sarah Canary as she wanders around the nineteenth century Pacific Northwest. Multiple people from varied walks of life interact with her; Chinese labourers, asylum occupants, suffragists, Native Americans, but none of them can discover the secret of who she is or where she came from. That’s pretty much it. I thought this was an intriguing idea and the book is listed as a SF classic but I just didn’t connect with it. I struggled to finish and probably won’t reread.

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Pied Piper � Nevil Shute

Shute is one of my all time favourite authors, with his classic A Town Like Alice always near the top of my list of Ìýbest books of all time, but I haven’t read that much else from him. I was delighted to discover his entire catalogue on iBooks for free so I downloaded a stack and dug in. Pied Piper is the story of John, an older gentleman who decides to vacation in the French countryside right at the end of the Phoney War in WW2. No one considers this a risky thing to do and everyone is shocked when the German invasion begins in earnest. John agrees to escort a couple of children back to England and so begins an increasingly dangerous journey across France. This book brought me to tears several times, which was a little awkward since I was reading it on a construction site. It has Shute’s simple yet emotionally pure writing style and I felt for all of the characters. I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to anyone.

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On finishing this book I realised it was written in 1942 � well before the end of the war and before D-Day. It seems incredible to me that Shute was able to write this in the midst of the Blitz, and how even back then he understood the dangers the Nazis posed to Jews, he mentions several times the horrible fate that will befall a Jewish child if captured, including listing the words concentration camp. It really gives the lie to the idea that ‘regular Germans� had no idea of the holocaust if a British author was writing about it as common knowledge in the early 40s.

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The Steerswoman � Rosemary Kirstein

The Steerswoman is Rowan, one of a society of questioning wanderers who collect information and distribute it wherever they go. Rowan is on the trail of a mysterious set of gems but discovers a cabal of wizards who will do anything to prevent her from finding out more. I can imagine that this book would have been pretty mind-blowing in the eighties when it was published, featuring two female main characters and a bold approach to classic fantasy. However, I just couldn’t quite connect with the characters and I felt I Could see the twists coming a mile off. I definitely should have read this when I was a kid as I would have loved it, coming at it now I don’t think I will continue with the series.

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If On A Winter's Night A Traveller � Italo Calvino

I’m trying to read a few less mainstream classics and this definitely fits the bill! It’s a meta book where you, the reader, go to a bookshop to buy Calvino’s newest book and end up reading the first chapter of ten or twelve different books. Mostly I enjoyed this, with all the different pastiches enjoyable in their own way. Ìý

An Old Captivity - Nevil Shute

Another free classic courtesy of Apple Books. The story of an archaeological expedition to Greenland in the early 30's takes a late turn for the fantastical when the main character dreams of Viking voyagers. A solidly enjoyable book although not reaching the heights of Alice or Pied Piper. There's a really excellent enemies to almost lovers romance plot line which is doomed by the shadow of WW2 on the horizon. Definitely made me want to explore Greenland with a dashing aeronaut by my side.

Amongst Our Weapons � Ben Aaronovitch

Reread. Book Nine in Rivers of London. Basically everything I said last month for False Value but I don’t love the side characters quite as much. Great to see more Inspector Seawoll though and several excellent scenes up on the Manchester moors.

I read twelve books this month! Full disclosure several of them were re-reads and also I was on holiday for two weeks so there was a lot of time to dig in.

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Saevus Corax captures the Castle � KJ Parker

The second in the Saevus Corax series and a very enjoyable instalment. Corax continues his business of cleaning up after the battles of the rich and important when an old enemy sends him off to capture a castle in the middle of nowhere. Features all the standard Parker strengths and weaknesses although there were more good female characters than usual. I find the battleground salvage perspective on fantasy very interesting, and I really liked all the side characters and how even though you just glimpser them they feel so real and deep. I preferred this to the first SC book and am excited to jump into the next one soon.

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Earthlings � Sayaka Murata

The story of a young Japanese woman, first in her troubled childhood and later in her even more troubled adulthood. I loved Convenience Store Woman by this author and had been meaning to read Earthlings for years. My friend finally lent it to me and it was� crazy! The first half seemed reasonably straightforward, although I was gripped by the urge to portal into the book and murder all the terrible people. But in the last half things just get incomprehensively weird. I still like the author and I definitely think she has talent but I just did not get this one.

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Treasure Island � Robert Louis Stevenson

Jim Hawkins goes to sea to track down the treasure of the dread Pirate Flint! I was convinced that I had read this before but once I got into it I realised that I must have read some children’s edition. To be honest I liked the children’s version more! This is a delightfully swashbuckling narrative but it suffers from Victorian convolution and I felt it really needed a good effort. However, it is still a great ride and contains one of the all time best villains in Long John Silver. Once I have written this up I am going to go and watch the Muppets film version!

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Warbreaker � Brandon Sanderson

A woman is promised in marriage to a mysterious Godking and her sister follows after her to try and rescue her and save their home. A BrandoSando book I had never read before and only knew vaguely that ‘colours were important�. This is a middling Sanderson which makes it excellent by regular standards! I very much liked how the main characters were so interestingly flawed and how they worked on their problems and recognised the motivations that were driving them.

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Portnoy's Complaint � Philip Roth

Alexander Portnoy complains about his mother for what feels like most of time. I had to put this down about halfway through because I only have so many days off in my life and I couldn’t spend any more reading this dire book. Roth is also a short story writer and I could have enjoyed this as a brief character study or novella. ÌýUnfortunately two hundred and seventy four pages was way too much.

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The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense � Suzette Haden Elgin

I have no idea how I stumbled across this book but it was very interesting. I don’t know if it will turn out to be useful but I enjoyed reading the dialogues. It’s also wild to discover that Elgin was a prolific SF author and I have several of her books on my TBR. I am even more tempted to pick them up now.

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Rereads!

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Tribune of Rome � Robert Fabbri

The first Vespasian book, covering his introduction to Tiberian era Rome and travel to Dacia on the orders of the brilliant if manipulative Antonia. ÌýAs a died in the wool I Claudian I can never quite agree with Fabbri’s portrayals of the Imperial family but his grasp of Roman military discipline and the grittier sides of Rome is truly excellent. Highly enjoyable reread.

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Rome's Executioner � Robert Fabbri

Second Vespasian book, featuring the young tribune’s return to Rome and work to destroy Sejanus. Fabbri doesn’t pull his punches or try to set up Vespasian as a modern hero, he portrays him as a realistic Roman man and that can sometimes be hard to warm to. I am planning to take a short break from the series until my appetite for blood and betrayal rises again!

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A Closed and Common Orbit � Becky Chambers

Second in the Galactic Commons Series and by far my favourite. Delightful, sad and hopeful all at once. Definitely recommend.

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Record of a Spaceborn Few � Becky Chambers

Third in the Galactic Commons Series. The weakest overall and you wouldn’t miss much if you went straight to the next. Tends towards the preachy side of hopepunk which I never find enjoyable.

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The Galaxy and the Ground Within � Becky Chambers

Fourth in the Galactic Commons Series. A return to form for the author and the first book which doesn’t have a human narrator or main character to frame the narrative through.

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False Value � Ben Aaronovitch

The eighth Peter Grant Magic Detective book (he would hate that name!) After the fall of the Faceless Man in the seventh book False Value scrabbles for a new direction and almost lands it in this tech startup meets the Folly, culture clash. Audiobook is read by the incomparably excellent Kobna Holdbrook Smith who musters all his talents to deliver the widest array of accents yet.