I didn’t read Jane Austen’s novels in the order that they were released, so for me, this was actually the final one (even though it was actually her penultimate piece). I’m happy to say that I saved the best until last – and I always had a feeling I’d love Northanger Abbey based on what I’d heard (even though I wasn’t consciously saving it).

One thing that I will say, though, is that when I see people talking about this novel (usually in bookish Instagram communities) they heavily misrepresent it. I’ve seen it recommended as a gothic novel quite a few times, but it is very much not a gothic novel. The protagonist, Catherine, is a huge fan of gothic novels, and believes herself to be the protagonist of one – but reality isn’t like that, so her expectations often lead her to disappointment and have her jumping to conclusions which are completely wrong. It’s satirical and I’d describe it as an early example of meta-fiction (even meta humour) in a novel, but it’s nothing like an actual gothic novel.

I think this actually ends up making Catherine quite endearing, and she was definitely one of my overall favourite Jane Austen characters. Her love of reading is something that I imagine most Austen fans will relate to, and while there are a number of jokes made of her imagining her life as a novel, it’s not to the extent of damaging the integrity of the overall story. I particularly liked its analysis of friendship and what makes somebody a good friend vs what gives somebody the appearance of being a good friend.

Catherine is an anxious over-thinker and, again, I am sure that most people will be able to relate to the way in which she wonders about the extent to which something she said might have been taken badly, or whether people are mad at her because of some unintended slight. I really felt for her, and the way in which a group of her friends nastily manipulate her at one point made me angry and uncomfortable in a way that I don’t think any of the other Austen novels ever did.

Interestingly, despite the title, Northanger Abbey itself doesn’t come into the story until quite far into the novel. Before that, Catherine spends most of her time in Bath – and I was delighted by that, because I live in Bath and am always happy when historic novels use it as a setting. I think she paints quite a nice portrait of it and its social scene too and was very fond of the early scenes of her first days there, trying to make new friends.

If you’ve never read any Jane Austen before, I’d actually recommend starting with this one, as I found it much more accessible and easier to follow than some of the others. It’s good fun and, of course, contains Austen’s usual insightful perspectives on human relationships and the hypocrisies of society.

Rating: 8.9/10

Buy it here.

With this volume, the story enters the endgame. There’s a sentimental feeling in the air as the children come to the end of their school year. They’re growing confident that they can find a way to cure Koro-sensei, and they’re all working on a year book so that they can reminisce about all the good times they’ve shared and how far they’ve come.

Sadly, and tragically, the governments of the world aren’t happy for the children to take this carefree approach to this situation. From their perspective, Koro-sensei is still an active threat to the safety of the planet, so before anyone can do anything, they trap him in the school, block of the kids’ access to him, and begin to work on a powerful assassination attempt.

The only other time that Koro-sensei has appeared so powerless was back when he was reduced to his Ultimate Defence Form during the island arc. Here though, his powerlessness is not brought about by a temporary change of form, but by the fact that he’s really been outmanoeuvred. I found it really sad that this all happens while he’s compiling year books for the students. He has a sort of hopelessness about him that you’ve never seen before, but he never loses his love for the kids, and that is quite bittersweet.

At the same time, it’s also quite beautiful to see all the kids coming together to help their teacher. At this point, they’ve been trying to kill him for ages, and it’s nice to see that they actually couldn’t go through with it and really care about him. Even Karasuma, actually, whose hands are tied, still manages to show his care for Koro-sensei, and I thought that was really cool.

Things have never felt more tense than they do at the end of this volume, and I don’t think I have ever felt more excited to read the next volume.

Rating: 9.8/10

Imagine a slightly more modern and Americanised approach to Jane Austen’s signature style. That’s exactly what Edith Wharton presents in this 1920 novel which focuses on the life in late nineteenth century affluent New York society. There’s a sort of dry, sarcastic humour that runs throughout it, and while that is fairly entertaining, it feels like it’s a little slow to get started. I need some emotional substance to get my hooked on a book, and for the first few chapters, I wasn’t exactly having a bad time or anything, but that just wasn’t there, so I wasn’t especially engaged.

But as it went on, I realised that it did indeed have quite a big heart to it – and that heart comes from Ellen Olenska. She’s a woman who is living apart from his husband and who moved to New York in the hopes that she would be accepted within progressive society. Sadly, that’s not the case, and despite her kind and earnest nature, she faces a lot of judgement from those who live there, especially those in her extended family.

The other most prominent character in the book is Newland Archer, who is the narrator. He’s engaged to May Wellend, a relation of Ellen’s, and so he gets to hear all the unpleasant family gossip about her, and is actually encouraged to try and make her change her mind. What happens is that Newland actually becomes quite good friends with her.

The problem with Newland is that he’s such a weak character. I don’t mean to suggest that he is ill-defined or poorly written – I mean that he hears people bad-mouthing Ellen and thinks to himself “gee, that was kind of harsh” but then almost never actually speaks up for her. Of course, there are loads of people who are afraid to speak out for the greater good because their opinions are “controversial” and his failure to stick up for her generally made me feel fonder of Ellen – which was no doubt the author’s intention.

I won’t spoil the ultimate path of the novel (I was both surprised and lightly disappointed by what happened) but the further I went, the more invested I became. It’s nice to read a relatively early novel which portrays a woman seeking a divorce in a sympathetic light, because even though it was set 50 years before it was written, it was still taboo in 1920. In general, it reads as kind of critique of marriage, and the way in which people resign themselves to a life of unhappiness with people they have either ceased to love, or never loved in the first place. While the opening chapters were laced with dry humour, it was quite sombre by the very end, and I appreciated the journey I’d been on with all the characters.

Rating: 7.9/10

Buy it here.

This is the third of the Goosebump books, and like all of them, it’s a bite-sized spooky read that gives off a sort of childhood Halloweeny feel. I didn’t like it quite as much as the first book, which has been my favourite so far, but I did think it was better than the second.

The story in this one sees a young boy named Evan who has to stay with an older relative who he really doesn’t like while his parents take care of something. He feels sad and isolated, but soon makes friends with a local girl called Andy, and together the two of them find a tin of something called “Monster Blood.”

What I liked about this story was that I never had any idea where it was going. There’s a vaguely uneasy atmosphere as they play with the Monster Blood, which is obviously a little suspicious. There are a few angles that you think the story might take, and while I won’t ruin anything (as it’s hardly a typical or predictable storyline) I will say that I was quite pleased with what happened and didn’t find myself getting bored at any point along the way. It even has a surprising level of backstory.

Towards the end, I thought it was genuinely quite a disturbing read. The ultimate conclusion sanitises some of the really dark stuff that happens, but that’s fine – it’s children’s literature, you’ve got to expect a happy ending to some extent. It gives a good taste of just how creepy Goosebumps has the potential to be. I also happen to think that Evan and Andy are the best duo I’ve seen in the series so far and they bring a good sense of fun to it and are both pretty endearing.

Regardless of your age, I recommend giving Monster Blood a try if you’re in the mood for something light and spooky.

Rating: 8/10

The grand finale of The Wheel of Time. It’s the longest series of novels I’ve ever finished, and even when the series was at its low points, I was always excited to see how it would all eventually end. Once Brandon Sanderson took over and breathed new life into the series, I was even more excited to see how he’d bring it over the finish line. Since the whole setting was built around the idea that this was a universe with circular time, I was sure it was going to be something really clever and profound.

Sadly, it seems I built it up too much in my mind. Since the first novel (I think) everyone has been talking about how The Last Battle is on its way. This battle takes up and enormous chunk of this book, but… it’s just a battle. It goes on for ages and ages and fits inside one massive chapter (which, according to my Kindle and based on my reading speeds, took 6 hours to read) and there’s not much to set it apart from what we’ve seen elsewhere in the series – just soldiers and Aes Sedai fighting Trollocs and the other Shadow forces all fighting each other.

One thing that sets it apart is that some characters actually die, but quite tellingly, I fond myself not really feeling anything for them. Weirdly, it was the death of one of the side characters which resonated with me the most, because I always admired her and (unlike other characters) very little was made of her death, so it seemed quite shocking and brutal. After spending so much time with these characters, I felt like I should feel a greater sense of loss at their deaths.

Something else that bothered me was that it felt like the novel failed to deliver on what I really felt was the whole point of The Wheel of Time. I’ve now read the entire series, and (mild spoiler alert) it never does anything with the concept of circular time. I was drawn to this series because I thought that it was really cool to have a universe built around that… but then this is only ever a piece of background information. Yes, some characters’ previous lives are relevant, but it never really goes further back than someone’s last life, so could just be a regular reincarnation-based setting. On top of that, I now know that Moiraine’s return never leads to anything really interesting either, she’s mostly just there, which sucks, because she is my favourite Wheel of Time character and I was so excited for her coming back. It’s especially disappointing that there’s never a substantial interaction with her and Lan. I wanted closure between them.

I don’t mean to say that I didn’t like this book – I did. There were some really cool scenes with Birgitte in the last battle, and she was actually used in a pretty clever way. There’s also a sense of a finality to it all, and I am pleased to see this story that I’ve been reading for so long come to a conclusion. I wasn’t exactly bored as I read it, just underwhelmed, so it was better than some of the other books. It’s a shame though, because The Gathering Storm gave me high hopes for a satisfying conclusion… only for it to kind of just be the same as a lot of the other books. I guess after sticking around for 14 massive novels, I just wanted more of a payoff.

Rating: 6.1/10

Buy it here.

I am quite a big Star Trek fan and I’m pretty fond of X-Men too. I also happen to have quite a soft spot for wacky comic crossovers. All things considered, I should have absolutely loved this comic. Sadly, while I didn’t hate it by any means, my response to it was pretty lukewarm.

The story is as follows: Kirk and the crew encounter a strange ship, which suddenly explodes. That ship (a Shi’ar vessel) actually had the X-Men on board, and at the last minute they teleport aboard the Enterprise. At first, everyone on the Enterprise thinks that the people who have teleported aboard might be hostile (and the X-Men are wary of the Starfleet personnel), though they soon learn to work together to overcome a shared problem.

Scott Lobdell had a difficult job – telling a compelling story in just a single comic book issue. I think he did the best he could under the circumstances. The biggest problem for me was that it felt like the story starts right at the end. Although this is the start of things for the crew of the Enterprise, the X-Men are explicitly coming towards the culmination of a larger plan. I wish it had been longer and there was more time to set things up. For a crossover between two universes that are quite far apart like this, you kind of need that.

The other downside is that nobody really has enough time to do very much. This isn’t just Kirk meeting Wolverine or something like that, it’s the ensemble cast of Star Trek The Original Series meeting up with a whole team of X-Men. You’ve got Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Wolverine, Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and lots of other characters, and there are only about 40 pages of story. With so many characters who need to have something to do, nobody is going to be written with any substantial depth.

Having said that, my favourite thing about this comic was that there were a few small moments that put a smile onto my face. Someone walks into the medical bay and says “Dr. McCoy” causing both Beast and Bones to turn around. Spock and Wolverine also have a “fight” where a Vulcan nerve pinch immediately incapacitates Logan, only for his regenerative abilities to kick in and wake him up almost instantly. I’m a massive nerd, really, so stuff like that will always tickle me.

Towards the end, there’s also a lovely speech about the hope for the future that Star Trek embodies, and the way in which the X-Men embody people coming together and working in unison, and that’s pretty lovely. It highlights why I love both franchises and kind of makes a good argument for why the two make sense for a crossover. The problem is, it’s just an overly complex story that ties the Shi’ar, Gary Mitchell, and the strange powers he gets in the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, and 40 pages is just not enough space for it, leaving it all feel a little shallow.

Rating: 6/10

This is a very curious historic text (and quite an upsetting one too) about a sailor named Leondert Hussenlosch. In 1724 Hussenlosch was marooned on a Ascension Isle (an uninhabited island) as punishment for the crime of “sodomy” which, for those not in the know, was historically used to refer to sex between two men. He was left with certain supplies, including a diary, and this book is that diary… or, at least, a translation of it, and some people question the extent to which the translation can be trusted (for reasons I will get into).

A lot of the diary is exactly what you would expect – a man chronicling his desperate attempts to stay alive with very limited access to food or water. As it goes on and his situation becomes more desperate, he resorts to drinking urine and turtle blood. It’s really bleak and he talks a lot about how he feels like he is barely alive. I came into this thinking “Oh, interesting, the diary of someone surviving on a desert island” but as I read through, I was more like “Oh gosh, this more man, what a harrowing thing to read.” It’s horrible to really think about how these are somebody’s lived experiences.

I think what makes it especially unpleasant to read is the context in which it is presented. The introduction makes it very clear that we are supposed to see this as the story of a man getting his just desserts. The hatred of queer people at this point in history is absolutely disgusting. Through a modern lens, this is an account of a man being oppressed by the horrible values of the time he had the misfortune of being born into.

Also, aside the fact that the translator is obviously coming at this from a very unsympathetic point of view, part of the reason that this is believed to have been an inaccurate translation is that it has some rather overt religions messaging – this mostly comes right in the middle and does sort of come out of nowhere. It may be that Hussenlosch genuinely had this religious epiphany, but I don’t think so. It’s also notable that there was another translation a few years later that was different – and of course, that could just mean that it was inaccurate and this one wasn’t, but as the original was lost and this one seems odd, we’ll never know for sure.

Nobody really knows what happened to Hussenlosch because his diary just stops and no diary was ever found. I like to think he found some way to escape that island and live happily, but it seems unlikely. What happened to him is a terrible tragedy – one just like millions of others that have befallen the LGBTQ+ community. It’s an interesting piece of history (and literary history too, since it was possibly an inspiration for Robinson Crusoe) and reflects the deeply disturbing lack of empathy that people are capable of displaying.

Read it here.

Not only is this book very interesting, but it’s one that holds a great deal of historic significance. Man Into Woman is an account of Lili Elbe’s experiences as a trans woman – one of the first in history to undergo gender affirming surgery. It’s in a kind of strange position though, where it seems to be an autobiography written in the third person, but then has lengthy sections (especially towards the end) written in the first person, before going on to encompass the author’s death, so I found it hard to know exactly how much it actually reflects her own words, and how much was tweaked, edited, or adjusted by others.

Regardless of the above, it’s a fascinating story. Her experience of her gender is quite different to that of other people’s that I’ve read about, as she says that she saw herself as having two personalities within one body – one, a man, who she lived as for much of her life, and one, a woman, who she knew would grow to become the dominant personality and could only do so without the man dying… emphasising that both would die if she hadn’t done that.

Besides writing about her experiences of transitioning to live as a woman and how right that felt for her, I also really liked reading about how it felt for her to be accepted by other women. She talks about the pleasure of women speaking to her as if she were another woman, of the acceptance she felt at a woman not feeling uncomfortable getting changed around her. Though I am not a trans woman myself, I found that these aspects in particular were very relatable to me.

Something else I liked, which is really not related to Lili being trans at all, is the way that she writes about the people in her life and how they help her. She writes a lot about the support she gets from her wife, later about her sister, and also an old friend of hers and you can really feel the love that she has for them and that they have for her – it’s quite beautiful, really.

Though there’s quite a tragic element to it all as well – partly tied to Lili’s death (which I found very upsetting, knowing when it occurred within her life) and partly tied to the fact that the Institute of Sexology in Germany plays a big part in her life and her transition. It was an important place indeed, but for those who know their history, the shadow of the Nazis hangs over Lili’s story, as they destroyed the institute once they came into power, significantly harming the acceptance and understanding of the LGBTQ+ community around the world.

Aside from the fact that Lili’s story is one of historical significance that is worth remembering, I think it’s a story that remains relevant today. Transphobia is an ever worsening problem, especially within the UK, and Man Into Woman shows that people have been able to accept trans women for almost 100 years. She even gets her passport changed by the King of Demark! Those who seek to spread division in society try to convince those with less knowledge on the subject that trans identities are something new and something dangerous, and Lili’s life flies right in the face of that. I recommend everybody read this.

Rating: 9.3/10

Read it here.

Of all the Shakespeare plays I’ve read – this was very much one of the lightest. Similar to Much Ado About Nothing, it never feels like there’s a great deal of tension or drama, and it doesn’t tie into any mythology or history. Luckily, it’s saving grace is that it has some fun with gender, similar to Twelfth Night, and that’s one of my favourite things in Shakesepare.

Actually, when I say it’s similar to Twelfth Night, that’s true in a number of ways – in it, two women, Rosalind and Celia go into hiding after Rosalind’s uncle (Ceila’s father) usurps his way into power and exiles them. They head into the Forest of Arden and then disguise themselves to protect their identity, and Rosalind in particular pretends to be a man, much as Viola does after she gets shipwrecked in Illyria. However, I felt like there were more complicated strands and misidentifications going on which made Twelfth Night a little more engaging, whereas As You Like It was much more just people meeting and having romances in the forest.

I do always enjoy stories of women falling in love with other women because they’re disguised as men at the time (and they don’t realise it). It’s probably the most overtly queer Shakespeare ever gets, and I appreciate it for that reason – especially when you consider the whole extra angle of these women being played by men. So you’d have had a man playing a woman pretending to be a man, which is quite a high degree of gender bending.

Ultimately, I wish the narrative had been a little meatier – the opening lays the groundwork for some fairly interesting political intrigue which never really comes back. The stakes never really feel particularly high, and to be honest, I didn’t really find it as funny or amusing as quite a lot of the others, so thank goodness it had the gender stuff in it, because I’d have been really bored otherwise. It is the origin of the “All the world’s a stage” speech, though, which is cool to see in context for the first time.

It’s not long, so definitely give it a go if you’re into queer history, but keep in mind that it may not be quite as riveting as other works by Shakespeare.

Score: 6.2/10

Some Doctor Who novels are basically just episodes in written form, others have the types of narrative that you’d never see on TV because they’re just not right for the medium. Shadowmind, the sixteenth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series, sits somewhere in the middle – it’s format feels very similar to a normal episode and the themes aren’t much darker or anything, but it has ideas that the special effects of the Seventh Doctor era would never have been able to capture.

So, after their harrowing experiences in Haiti, the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Bernice plan to have a more peaceful trip as a little treat for Ace’s birthday. At first, that’s exactly what happens (and I always enjoy stories where we actually get to see the Doctor and their companions actually enjoying themselves) but before you know it, they get caught up in an adventure – which all starts with an explosion.

The following adventure is a story of people who aren’t who they appear to be, and are instead duplicates with tiny little creatures controlling them from within. These creatures are called the Shenn and while I didn’t expect much of them initially, I actually thought that they were one of the most interesting unique alien races to be seen in the novels – they’re genuinely quite “alien” when compared to a lot of other species in the Doctor Who universe, and their motivations are engaging and nuanced. It’s genuinely enjoyable story, and one that gives us a glimpse at the ever-growing dark side of the Seventh Doctor as it comes to a close.

By this point, I’m really quite enjoying the Doctor, Ace, Bernice trio and think the dynamic between the three of them has been quite well established. This book also did a good job of showing that despite the new tough guy persona that Ace has adopted since her temporary departure from the Doctor, she is still very much the character as we knew her in the earlier novels (and episodes). Though I have to admit I find myself rolling my eyes at the author finding excuses to have her get naked twice throughout the course of the plot, and one of those instances lasts a very long time (and includes another woman). It felt a bit like that typical sci-fi writer thing of having any excuse for the women to be naked.

It’s a minor gripe though. All things considered, I think I enjoyed it just as much as the previous novel, White Darkness. It’s a good run of back-to-back stories that’s just a little grittier than usual Doctor Who, without feeling needlessly edgy. Also, though I love this kind of thing, it’s to its credit that it manages to be quite engaging without drawing too much from Doctor Who’s past.

Rating: 8.3/10