Thomas Hardy is a writer that has already won me over. The first two of his books were amain and I went into this with high expectations. While I didn’t enjoy it as much as Jude the Obscure or Tess of the d’Urbervilles, it was still a fantastic book that captured that same charm.

The storyline follows a character called Gabriel Oak. Oak is a farmer who ends up working for a woman named Bathsheba Everdene, who had previously declined his hand in marriage. We then get to see a rough love triangle form between Bathsheba and a toxic and creepy guy named Sergeant Troy, and a man named William Boldwood, who becomes kind of obsessed with her – both are attracted to Bathsheba, but her feelings towards them are complicated. Meanwhile, Oak stands on the sidelines and watches it unfold as she confides it all in him.

One of the best things about this novel is its setting. Aside from a brief bit that’s kind of about Bath (and as a resident of Bath, this delights me), it’s almost entirely set in a very isolated rural community. The introduction even makes reference to it being so cut off that going there was almost like going back in time. The feel of the countryside runs through the entire thing, and the author does a fantastic job of making it feel like a beautiful, if unforgiving, location. If you love novels to have a strong sense of place, this is something that you’re sure to really appreciate.

Of course, this being Thomas Hardy, he also does a brilliant job of highlighting the plight of women in his time. Stuck between Oak, Boldwood, and Troy, Bathsheba essentially has the option of choosing the lesser of three evils. There’s the attractive, but manipulative scumbag, the pathetic guy who is endlessly loyal, but can’t get over her rejection and feels entitled to her love, then there’s the “nice guy” who’s actually quite an unsympathetic jerk to her too.

The characters are all well fleshed out and it’s a drama I enjoyed seeing play out. It isn’t shy about showing the very severe consequences of women being used by men, and things come to a really shocking head towards the end. Because everyone was so well written, I even cared about the characters I actively disliked.

While the very final end wasn’t quite as good as it could have been, ultimately, this was an amazing piece of human drama against a beautiful countryside backdrop. If you’re a lover of classics, this is one to try.

Rating: 8/10

Buy it here.

This is the third full-length Sherlock Holmes novel, and the fifth book in the series when you count the short story collections. I’d argue that this is probably the most iconic one, and certainly the one that has had the biggest impact on popular culture. For me, as a big Holmes fan, it’s an absolute joy to read.

For those unfamiliar with the premise, it has Holmes and Watson called in to investigate a murder that was seemingly caused by a spectral hound, said to haunt a certain family. Set out in the cold dark moors, everything seems to indicate that this was a genuine supernatural encounter – though, of course, Holmes remains sceptical.

The idea of the rationally-minded person coming against things that seem to be beyond this world is one that so many stories have revisited in the many years since this novel’s original publication. I’m pretty sure that this was the first time that this trope was used, and if not, it was certainly the instance which propelled it forward in the general consciousness. Those who love literary history are sure to get a lot out of this.

I think one of the book’s biggest strengths is its atmosphere and tone. The barren feeling out in the moors is described perfectly, capturing that beautiful classic gothic novel vibe. It’s one of those books that’s perfect to curl up with late at night – partially because it’s genuinely quite creepy. Horror isn’t generally an aspect of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but when they try and be eerie, they do a fantastic job and this is a perfect example of that.

While Watson’s role in Sherlock Holmes stories can sometimes feel a little insignificant (with him mostly just relaying what Holmes does), this is one of the stories that uses him really well. Holmes is actually absent for quite a long time, leaving Watson to investigate on his own for a bit, and this is pretty great. I love Holmes, but I appreciate Watson getting the chance to play centre stage, and the aspect of Holmes being absent is actually a really interesting and important part of the plot.

Altogether, it’s one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, and as the novels go, it’s certainly aged better than The Sign of Four. Even if you’ve never read another Sherlock Holmes story, you’d be able to enjoy this one, so I recommend it to all fans of Sherlock Holmes and classic novels.

Rating: 9.2/10

Buy it here.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is probably one of the most influential British children’s novels ever written. It’s a story that has had homage after homage in popular culture, and pretty much everybody has heard of the character, Willy Wonka. Though I never read the book as a child, I do enjoy Roald Dahl’s work, and it was one of those books that I felt I should try.

At the start, I loved it. Chocolate is delicious, and so much of the first half of the book is dedicated to how great chocolate is, and it talks about all kinds of delicious Willy Wonka inventions. Reading it, it’s easy to see that Roald Dahl must have loved chocolate himself. There’s a description of simply eating a chocolate bar at one point, and gosh, it makes me want to eat a chocolate bar. There’s also a chocolate river.

The second half, I enjoyed less so. It’s darkly funny throughout, but it has a preaching moralising aspect to it. The book’s protagonist, Charlie, goes on a tour of the chocolate factory along with a bunch of other kids. These other kids, while perhaps a little rude, all meet with a horrible fate as seemingly some kind of karmic retribution for their flaws… except their flaws are things like, they enjoy watching TV, or, they like to chew gum. Fortunately, none of them die, but gosh, it sure does feel a lot like Roald Dahl is just up on his soap box moaning about certain behaviours that frustrate him. It hasn’t really aged well at all and I just felt sad for the kids a lot of the time – even anxious for them.

The most uncomfortable thing is the Oompa Loompas. They survive in our popular culture and are thought of as these whimsical fantasy creatures… Unfortunately, their portrayal in the novel reads very much like colonialist exploitation, or even slavery. Indeed, I understand that Roald Dahl made changes to the book, because the first edition was even more problematic (even for it’s time), but even in this version, it’s hard for a progressive-minded adult not to feel weird about this.

There is a lot that I admire about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – the descriptions of food are great, and the factory itself is a wonderful and enchanting setting that really captures that childhood feeling of the world potentially containing endless possibilities. Plus it’s genuinely funny, even for adults and literary fans will enjoy seeing the origins of things like the golden ticket. The problem is that Roald Dahl pushes his belief too much, and those beliefs are pretty dodgy, so it does spoil the book quite a bit.

Rating: 6/10

Buy it here.

The premise of this book is a bizarre, metatextual one: what if Star Trek: The Next Generation had had an eighth season, and that eighth season had been so incredibly bad that it had never been aired, and then someone had had the chance to watch these unreleased episodes and write an episode guide about them? It’s not your standard sci-fi franchise spin-off book, but it’s a lot of fun.

Originally the author, Mike McMahan, had a Twitter account which he dedicated to writing really silly Star Trek TNG story synopsise. Due to its popularity, he was able to publish an official book filled with these storylines, which he said was inspired by his love of the silly B storylines that real episodes of TNG have. It’s a nice, loving way of sending the series up, and it’s sure to appeal to fans.

So what kind of things do the characters get up to in this season? Well, Q sets up a timeloop where Barclay relives the same day over and over, to see if it’s possible for him to survive without the help of others, but he ends up comically dying every single time, sometimes in the most mundane ways (e.g. an ear infection spreads to his heart). In another, there’s a planet that ends up being entirely populated with Riker clones. In another, Q asks for Picard’s help in breaking up with Cleopatra, but then accidentally changes all of history, so then needs to mess the timeline up so badly that it all snaps back to normal.

Some of them, in particular the one about Q messing up the timeline, are things I’d have loved to have seen as actual light-hearted episodes of the show. Other times though, it goes too far down the path of being silly. Most notably, Data and Geordi are both always written as socially awkward losers who are extremely childlike – they’re complete parodies, and I know that’s a weird criticism since the whole thing is a general parody of TNG, but I think it’s funnier when the characters are close enough to their legitimate portrayal, but still in the absolute silliest storylines.

Still, as a fan of TNG and Star Trek in general, overall I found this book hilarious. There are so many laugh out loud moments that fans are going to love. It’s a weird combination of storylines that are so silly, they’d obviously never have existed, and those that could be just about plausible. Still, to its credit, even though I didn’t love all the episode ideas equally, not one of them failed to make me laugh. Also, one of the stories introduces a member of the Q continuum who goes by the name California Steve. I want that to be canon.

Rating: 8/10

This is the second book in the Howl series of novels. While it is set in the same universe as the first book, for a long time, it feels very much like an entirely unrelated story to Howl’s Moving Castle. You are introduced to a character called Abdullah who lives in Zanzib, a completely different country, and while Ingary is mentioned, you won’t find any familiar elements for quite a while.

The main character, Abdullah, is a simple carpet merchant who dreams of a better life, liking to imagine that he might actually be a prince, and not related to the family that he struggles to get on with. Of course, adventure soon comes his way, when he is sold a magic carpet… the only problem is that he can’t figure out the magic word to activate it, but somehow says it in his sleep.

He whooshes off to a beautiful garden, where he meets a woman called Flower-in-the-Night, and the two seem to got on really well – and she’s a princess too. Everything is going well, until a djinn swoops down and kidnaps her, which of course leads the sultan to believe that Abdullah himself has something to do with the disappearance. To prove his innocence, he heads out to find and rescue her.

Along the way, Abdullah is joined by an old soldier, who’s a wary character, uninterested in helping others – the two make a very different team to Howl and Sophie from the first book. Aside from that change in dynamic, the biggest difference is the fact that the story is much more focused this time. Abdullah is on a journey to rescue Flower-in-the-Night, while Sophie Hatter just kind of hobbled along with Howl, encountering one whimsical thing after the next.

In true Arabian Nights fashion, the story also features a Genie, who comes under the control of Abdullah. He also adopts a cat called Midnight. I can’t say a lot about either of them without spoiling anything, but the way that they were used was absolutely fantastic. Indeed, I might say that they contributed to my favourite part of the book.

While the book may seem standalone at first, towards the end in particular, you will get a lot more out of it if you read Howl’s Moving Castle first. Those who are put off by the huge differences should keep going, as you won’t be disappointed. While I personally prefer the charming whimsy of the first book, it’s clear that Diana Wynne Jones was going for a different style and feel for this one, and I can’t fault her for expanding her universe in that way. If you wanted the first book to be just a little more serious, then you might like this one even more. If you’re an Aladdin fan, then I think you’ll definitely love it, but regardless of your taste, I think it’s fair to say that this is a great fantasy adventure that should appeal to most fans of the genre.

Rating: 8.8/10

Buy it here.

This was a behemoth of a book that took me the better part of a year to read (as an aside, I am very glad I have multiple books on the go these days, rather than just one, like when I read Ulysses) and during that time, I had very mixed feelings. Sometimes I’d read a chapter and think “Wow, this did a really good job of capturing the bonds of friendship, what a good book”, other times I’d read a chapter and think “gosh, this is boring, why is this description of a river so long?” and sometimes I’d even think “oh my goodness, what is wrong with Stephen King, why did he write in a child orgy?”

So, for those who don’t know, It tells the story of a small, rural American town in which an otherworldly entity manifests and wrecks havoc on the population for its own satisfaction/survival… except nobody in the world, even the town’s citizens, ever seem to realise that there have been so many violent and horrific incident taking place there. Most iconically, ‘It’ takes the form of Pennywise the clown, who comes after the main group of characters (seven kids who call themselves The Losers Club). The story jumps around in time, and we see them learning about It and getting ready to face It as children, as well as returning to their hometown as wary adults because It seems to have returned.

There are some bits about how friendships grow and change after childhood, but how they remain important into adulthood which I thought were quite beautiful. Indeed, many of the bits about them becoming friends and whiling away their time in childish ways were so appealing to me, that I sometimes thought it didn’t need the supernatural horror at all. The human drama was well-written and I felt invested in all of their relationships – by far, this was my favourite thing about It.

Something that was more hit and miss, was the story’s side-steps. There were various flashbacks and scenes of horrific events caused by It, which weren’t directly connected to the main storyline. Some were quite interesting, others were quite bland, and some felt needlessly gratuitous. What I didn’t like, for example, were stories about homophobic or racial violence, which was attributed to the presence of It. The thing is, such awful things don’t need to be attributed to a supernatural evil, because they happen all the time in the real world, and using them to heighten the sense of horror surrounding the titular monster just feels a little bit too exploitive – putting violence against minority groups in there just for the shock factor.

Having said that, I don’t mean to accuse Stephen King of being racist or homophobic himself. Generally speaking, I would say the book is fairly progressive in that regard, because those violent acts of prejudice are always condemned – along with domestic violence too. So while I am glad to see these things being rightly criticised, even in a slightly older piece of writing, I’d still question using such awful real world horrors to primarily reinforce the evil of Pennywise. I am not against writers tackling these subjects by any means, but it felt just a little tasteless.

As for the horror itself – it was a little too in-your-face for me. The descriptions of the terrifying forms that It took were never particularly creepy in my mind. Some people, I’m sure, will get the shivers when they read descriptions of scary monsters and lots of gore, but I prefer horror that doesn’t show too much. Creepiness that only becomes apparent when you read between the lines. Having said that, I still felt some degree of tension during these scenes, because I cared about the characters and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.

I should also mention the infamous “child orgy” scene, which was really uncomfortable to read and completely unnecessary. I won’t spoil the full context as it’s near the end, but basically, the one female character in the main group of friends has sex with all the male characters, one after the other, and they’re all around ten or eleven years old. There’s a really loose story reason for all this, which felt very forced, and I don’t think this should have been included. The ‘reason’ that it was included, which I won’t spoil, kind of conveys a rather old fashioned (and in my mind, harmful) attitude about sex.

Overall, I am glad that I read this book. There are several aspects of it that I really admire Stephen King for. There are also, however, several aspects that are irritating – long tangents and things that we know about in far too much detail (the whole history of a river, loads of details on the contents of one character’s medicine cabinet, etc). It can often feel annoying when you want the story to move on, but you’re stuck reading about some historic event. I think what Stephen King wanted to do, was make Derry (the book’s setting) really feel like a real location, but in the process, gave us far too much information, which pads the book out significantly. There are some nuggets in here, for sure, but mining through to find them will sometimes feel like a chore.

Rating: 6.9/10