The third book in the first Mistborn trilogy is very different to the first two. While the first was a fairly clear-cut case of a ragtag group coming together to overthrow an evil regime and the second was a nuanced book about how to bring peace and stability in the power vacuum that follows the fall of an evil dictator, the third was more about everyone facing the end of the world. Their goals and the course of action they could take to resolve things was much less obvious. For these reasons, the book could feel like it had less direction and overall felt a bit slower than the other two, but it was more than made up for with its fantastic ending.

For me, Vin and Sazed remained the most enjoyable characters throughout. Vin is very much a figure of hope for the world (like Kelsier was, to some extent), while Sazed has changed a lot following the death of Tindwyl at the end of the previous novel. He’s lost his enthusiasm for learning about the world’s religion and has kind of lost all enjoyment in life whatsoever, including his faith in any religion. Going believing all religions, to not caring about any of them creates a fascinating spiritual dilemma for him. Throughout the whole series, Sazed and Vin have been my favourite characters and I found that their ultimate fates brought their character arcs to a fantastic close. I won’t spoil what happens, but it was incredible.

Vin’s own optimism and the way that she keeps working to find solutions to their seemingly unsolvable problems, contrasts nicely against her husband, Elend, who doesn’t give up, but seems very defeatist. While Elend had never been one of my favourite characters, it is interesting to see what ultimately happens; he goes from an idealistic youth with no power, to an in-experienced leader who makes a lot of mistakes, to a much more wary man who puts on a brave face in front of what he might privately consider insurmountable odds. In some ways, his gloominess and cynicism can be a bit annoying, but I do appreciate the evolution the character has undergone. It’s interesting to see him acting as a Mistborn now too – it adds a nice change to his dynamic with Vin.

Speaking of ultimate fates, the fantastic ending that I mentioned is one which provides lots of information about the ways in which Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere works. There are some pretty mindblowing occurrences and revelations – there’s no way anybody could predict the way that it ends (probably), but it’s very out there. However, unlike other fantasy novels which opt for very out-of-this-world resolutions, this one is easy to follow and makes a lot of sense.

I suppose another aspect that I like about this novel is that it tells the story of a civilisation that’s on the brink of collapse, facing an apocalyptic event that is likely going to bring about the end of the human race. It’s a bleak situation which, to some extent, readers will be able to compare against the state of the world, but the optimistic way in which things are ultimately handled is refreshing.

Another positive to this book was the fact that Spook, as a character, finally comes into his own. While he’s initially the young side character who doesn’t quite fit in, here he starts to become a lot like Kelsier (much more than Vin does), including adopting some of his flaws. Spook was a character who I was kind of indifferent to throughout the first two books, so I was impressed to see the extent to which he grew and developed here, becoming one of my favourite characters for the final book.

All in all, I think I’d say that the second book in the series was my favourite one, but the strength of the ending here was extremely satisfying – much moreso than the endings of the first two novels. If the entire thing had been as good as that, it would easily have been my favourite, but as it happens, chunks of it do feel a bit slow, so I think the second book was my favourite, but if you read the first two, I strongly recommend investing in the second.

Rating: 9.1/10

Buy it here.

Gosh, this book is going to be hard to review because I have so many conflicting feelings about it. But, anyway, here’s my attempt.

One Small Mistake tells the story of a young writer named Elodie who’s desperate to get a book deal, her possessive friend Jack, and her sister Ada. I don’t want to spoil any of the developments, as there are a lot of big surprises, but it essentially explores the lengths to which Elodie will go to achieve her dream of getting a book deal… and the very serious consequences that follow.

Elodie herself was someone that it’s hard for me to have a clear opinion of. In the early days of the novel, I saw her as somebody who was very single minded and always assumed that everybody in her life was out to get her. Her attitudes about others are often quite negative, but then, her family are often very unfair towards her, so it’s easy to see why somebody might start to think in this way. For some time, I felt actively negatively towards her, because she makes a decision that will cause huge amounts of emotional trauma to the people who are in her life… we later learn that she didn’t actually have a choice here, but the fact remains, that she did make a decision to harm lots of people for her own gain and it’s hard to root for somebody like that… but then, so many awful and terrible things happen to her, that I actually just found myself feeling sorry for her for the majority of the novel. Other times, she came across as extremely naïve and I’ll get to that in a moment.

Then there’s Jack. Gosh. Pretty much as soon as I read this character’s first scenes, I felt uncomfortable. He’s a ridiculously manipulative and possessive person and this, to me, was clear all the way from the start. Elodie, however, never seems to question any of this behaviour, which factors into her naivety, but then, this happens a lot in reality, so it’s not a fault. Having said that, once Jack decides to become more overtly sinister, I felt that he became almost a parody of himself – almost an over-the-top villain, which is a shame because he felt more true to life at first. There was one aspect of him that I also found particularly problematic.

Jack does some terrible, unforgivable things in this book. Most of this is seen through Elodie’s point of view and her opinion is very much “Jack has mental health problems and that’s why he did these bad things” indeed, she has a conversation at one point, where she essentially says that mental health problems are the only reason that somebody would do something really terrible to somebody else. This was another area where Elodie seemed naïve. To me, this seems quite disrespectful to people with mental health conditions and I think it ignores something important: if somebody does something terrible to somebody else, it’s often because the culture they’ve been raised in and the values that have been imposed upon them have lead them to believe that those actions are justifiable – I felt this was particularly true of Jack. To write it off as “mental health” issues stigmatises mental health problems and, here, seems to diminish Jack’s accountability to some extent.

But, anyway, let’s move on to Ada. At first, Ada seems somewhat antagonistic towards Elodie, but she becomes a lot more sympathetic as the novel unfolds – especially once we start to get chapters written from her point of view. Ada is someone who married into what seemed to be an idealistic life, but soon found herself questioning her path in life. She undergoes a great deal of character development and, I would say, becomes a better person throughout the course of the novel. She was definitely my favourite character overall and at each new chapter, I was hoping for it to be from her perspective, rather than Elodie’s. I genuinely liked her.

Next is another controversial point. The book goes out of its way to point out that there is a lot of pressure on women to have babies and that not all women want to do that. For this, I applaud it. There is absolutely too much pressure on women to become mothers and it’s refreshing to have a story where the female characters don’t see parenthood as the overall goal in life. It’s an important issue that needed to be tackled… however, it almost goes in the opposite direction. By this, I mean that it sometimes felt quite spiteful towards mothers and there were even a few snide comments about the changes that a woman’s body undergoes when she has a child, which felt regressive and unnecessary. Of course, it’s reasonable to point out that somebody might not want to go through a process that will cause them to have significant physical changes – but it feels wrong to then cast those changes in a negative light. It felt a little superficial.

Which brings me to another point. One of the morals of the story seems to be that “just because somebody is physically attractive, doesn’t mean that they are a good person” which is a revelation Elodie herself comes to at one point. Of course, this is completely true and something I 100% agree with, but it felt odd for this to be a revelation for a woman in her late twenties. It was another one of those factors which made Elodie seem very naïve – this is the kind of revelation people have when they’re little children, surely?

I realise a lot of what I’ve said here might sound negative, but also, I loved reading this book. I was always looking forward to the next chapter and very keen to see how everything worked out for the characters. In fact, it has also been a book that has caused me to have a lot of discussions with people, making it quite thought-provoking… but then, the majority of my discussions were me saying to people “I disagree with this thing in this book” or “the character in this book seems flawed in this way”. Although then, doesn’t that just show that the author has successfully created nuanced and flawed characters who’s failings and motivations are fun to discuss?

So, in conclusion, this was an enjoyable thriller. I was always keen to see what was going to happen next, it prompted a lot of discussion between me and my friends, it highlights the pressure women have on them to have babies and it also has important things to say about rape and consent. At the same time, it has characters who are flawed in ways that aren’t always properly addressed, it can come across as quite anti-motherhood at times and some of the events that unfold push suspension of disbelief just a little bit too far. Does this make the book good or bad? Well, at the end of the book, Elodie asks a similar question about Jack, weighing up his good deeds with his bad and concludes that instead of calling him good or bad, she’d just say that he was a person. Likewise, I will sum this up by saying that this is a book, a book with all the strengths, virtues and weaknesses you might find in a human being, and a book you should read yourself to form your own opinion.

Rating: 7.7/10

Buy it here.

Greta Thunberg has been campaigning to raise awareness for the climate crisis since 2018. This book gathers together a selection of her most important and influential speeches on the subject.

For those who don’t know about her message, she’s essentially doing all she can to highlight the fact that the climate crisis poses as existential threat to all human beings. Her speeches rightly calls out world leaders and business owners who are responsible for the largest contributions of carbon into our atmosphere. She draws attention to the fact that while many businesses and governments claim that they are being environmentally friendly, or taking steps to tackle the crisis, the reality is that they are doing very little indeed. She highlights that the rate of change is not nearly enough to save humanity from disaster and depends too much on future technological developments which might not even happen.

It’s bleak and depressing reading, but it is enormously important. Everyone needs to be aware of the reality of the situation and to push back against governments and businesses who are essentially lying to everybody. The fact that she is doing such a good job of getting her message out there does give me a bit of hope, but there’s so much more that needs to be done.

The only real criticism that I have of this book is that because it is a collection of speeches that Thunberg gave to different audiences, occasionally they can be a bit repetitive. Still, perhaps that helps to reinforce her message. Ultimately, I have the utmost respect for her and if the world can change the way things work to combat a pandemic, then we can and should be taking equally drastic measures to combat climate change.

Rating: 9/10

Buy it here.

As I’m sure you already know, Moby Dick is widely regarded as one of the best pieces of American literature ever written. I love the classics and I also have a particular soft spot for American literature, so, of course, I was keen to read this book. Unfortunately, it was an experience I found very disappointing.

It starts out well enough, with the main character (Ishmael), narrating how he came to meet Captain Ahab and ultimately ended up joining him for a whaling voyage. This lasts for approximately the first fifth of the book and if the whole thing was written like this, I’d actually think it was an alright sort of book. Unfortunately, once their journey across the ocean began, my enjoyment of the book dropped dramatically.

The problem was that this is a really long book, but not very much happens while they travel across the sea. Chapters are filled with Herman Melville’s knowledge of whales and whaling and I’ll admit that occasionally I’d get to a bit that was kind of interesting, but the problem is that Melville’s knowledge of whales is not 100% accurate. This may be because I have the luxury of modern understanding, but a lot of stuff that he says is just wrong. Are whales mammals or fish? Practically everybody today knows that they are mammals… but Melville spends quite a lot of time talking about how they are fish and not mammals. Other times he just starts talking about non-whale related subjects and trying to make them whale-related, for example, arguing that the dragon in the story of St. George was actually a whale.

But, you know what, I love whales. They’re fascinating and beautiful creatures. If it was just a bunch of longwinded and inaccurate essays about them, I think I’d still have gotten a reasonable amount of enjoyment from the book. Probably the most frustrating thing of all was that he goes to great lengths to try and convince the reader that whaling is a very noble and respectable line of work. Whaling is cruel and barbaric and it almost caused whales to go extinct. This is something Melville would have been surprised by because one of his little essays is about how human beings could never over-hunt whales because there’s just so many of them. Melville himself was a whaler and at times he genuinely seemed to have forgotten he was writing this book in the first person as Ishmael and just slips into talking about his own life and opinions. It comes across quite badly at times.

That aside, there’s the character Queequeg, a Polynesian man. I believe that Melville probably included him in order to try and be progressive and I respect that intent, but it does come across as very patronising and not very well thought out. Ishmael and Queequeg do form a genuinely strong friendship and I liked this a lot. They sleep in the same bed with their arms wrapped around one another and even get married to each other in a tradition that comes from Queequeg’s people. I don’t know if we were supposed to read them as gay, or if this was more to highlight the strength of their friendship (I really like either option), but it’s interesting and refreshing to read. However, throughout the book, Queequeg is referred to a ‘cannibal’ and genuinely treated as someone of lower intelligence. At one point, Ishmael says something along the lines of “of course I respect Queequeg’s religion, even if to me it is the equivalent of an ant worshipping a mushroom.” which I think nicely sums up the patronising way that Queequeg is treated throughout the book, and I don’t think that this is an intentional way of highlighting the prejudice of the time either.

So, as with any book, there were bits that I liked and appreciated. But, gosh, this book felt like a huge chore. Sadly, there was more that I didn’t like than what I did like. It just reads like unstructured rambling a lot of time, with Melville trying to show off that he knows a lot about whales, (when really he actually doesn’t) and only the loosest story to tie it all together. I did kind of like how it ended, at very least, but I have to say, if I were editing it, I’d have cut out so much that I’d turn this really long novel into little more than a short story – it’s just so full of things that did nothing for me.

Rating: 4.4/10

Buy it here.

While browsing the pages of Wikipedia, I found myself looking at the page of a bizarre historic figure called the Count of St. Germain. While reading his page, I thought that he seemed a very bizarre and enigmatic person, so I decided I’d try a biography about him. I chose the one written by Isabel Cooper-Oakley (the best known option) and I’m really glad I did, because this book was absolutely fascinating.

What makes the Count of St. Germain so interesting? Well, where should I begin? There’s the fact that nobody knows what his real name was. The fact that he claimed to have found the secrets to immortality. The fact that people who knew him claimed that he always appeared to be physically exactly the same (never aging), even after decades. The fact that he claimed to have knowledge of the future and seemingly tried to warn people about it. The fact that he appeared to be able to speak ‘every’ language fluently… I could go on.

The Count of St. Germain is an absolutely fascinating figure and Isabel Cooper-Oakley has gathered together a nice selection of historic texts that refer to him or shed light on the story of his life. You’ll find correspondence between him and government officials, personal accounts from members of royal families about his visits and more. I found the sections about his visits to the French Monarchy ahead of the revolution particularly engaging reads.

A lot of the time, I found myself feeling like I was reading a piece of sci-fi or fantasy, like all of these documents were just part of a story about a time traveller or a vampire, or something like that. I love that it’s all real and I can’t help but wonder what exactly was really going on with him.

Cooper-Oakley explains that because the Count had a bit of a reputation for being somewhat otherworldly, people began to make up exaggerated tales about him. Some people even used to go around pretending to be him in order to try and discredit him, which makes sense. Plus, some of the more outlandish accounts (for example, one where he gives somebody a description of life in the twentieth century centuries before) have at least a shadow of a doubt against their integrity.

Still, most of the strange and outlandish things about him are reported by reliable sources. A lot of very important people seemed to genuinely believe that this man didn’t age, or that he was potentially hundreds of years old. Was he a genius conman who was manipulating the leaders of the world towards his own ends? If so, what was his goal? There are so many unanswered questions.

I loved this book and am so glad to have had a chance to learn about this historic oddity. He instantly became my favourite historic mystery too. We may never have a rational explanation for all of these accounts, but it’s certainly fun to just take them all at face value and imagine that they’re all completely true.

Rating: 9/10

Buy it here.

In Volume 10 of Assassination Classroon, things are now back to normal for the class following the drama that unfolded for them while they were on the tropical island. As such, things are fairly light-hearted at first. Kayano finally gets to take a turn in the spotlight with her own unique assassination attempt involving a giant cake and then the class gets involved in some free-running based training. Standard Assassination Classroom stuff – not boring by any means, but not as interesting as some of the more recent events.

However, things really do start to pick up when certain allegations are raised against Koro-sensei. Various women in the area have had underwear stolen from them and based on the descriptions they give, the children can only conclude that Koro-sensei is responsible. However, as he denies that this is the case, the class begins to investigate the matter, keen to find out the truth one way or another.

I won’t spoil the outcome of that investigation, but this volume also sees the return of Itona. I was already interested in Koro-sensei’s “brother” but he’s written really interestingly here and has some great character development, including a look at his backstory.

All in all a satisfying volume. As always, I’m left looking forward to the next volume and still strongly recommend this superb manga!

Rating: 8.7/10

Buy it here.

Is it ethical to have a child so that they can serve as a donor for another child? This is the question that this book explores. Kate is a little girl who is dying from Leukaemia and her parents have another child, Anna, so that she can be a bone marrow donor for her sister. Throughout her life, she undergoes a number of very painful procedures in order to help prolong Kate’s life, but then at thirteen, she decides that she will no longer go through with all of this, after her mother tells her that she will need to donate a kidney to her sister.

This is such a fascinating concept to me and what helps to make this an absolutely incredible novel is the fact that each and every character is really well developed. At times you may think that Anna’s mother, Sara, seems cold and uncaring towards Anna, but then when you get to see all that she’s been through with Kate’s health deterioration and it’s difficult to stay mad at her, because you see where she’s coming from even if, like me, you are completely on Anna’s side.

Eventually, this turns into a court case, with Anna seeking medical emancipation from her parents so that she can gain autonomy on all medical matters. Through this, you meet Campbell Alexander, Anna’s lawyer, a character who has an interesting history of his own which adds a lot to the novel. I cared very much for every character, because as a reader, I’d been through so much with everyone of them. When conflict arises, you can sympathise with everyone and it all feels so real.

Ultimately, what Jodi Picoult has done is take an interesting question of moral philosophy and then created a cast of three-dimensional characters with a huge amount of depth in order to humanise every perspective. No character really exists just to serve a purpose in the plot, rather, each person feels as though they are the main character of their own story – just as they should.

The book has a huge twist which I didn’t see coming and which left me absolutely stunned. As usual, I won’t spoil anything about it, but I will say that this is one of the moving novels I’ve read in a long time. The emotional impact was so big, that I felt it a long time after I’d finished book and so I can only give it my highest recommendation. Do try it!

Rating: 9.8/10

Buy it here.

I read through the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire with a kind of strange perspective. Of the first three, there had certainly been things that I’d liked, but there’d also been a lot of things that I didn’t like. By this point in time, I go in not really expecting to enjoy myself, but just wanting to find out what happens. To some extent, having zero expectations means that I was able to enjoy it more. I suppose the best way of putting it is to say that it when you’re in a room with a bad smell, you eventually get used to that bad smell and I do find myself slowly getting used to the smell of A Song of Ice and Fire.

So, spoiler alert for the previous book, one thing that quite disappointed me was that the cliff-hanger of the last book (Catelyn’s unexpected return) isn’t revisited until right at the end and even then, not much is done with it. Plus, knowing that this book is contemporaneous with the next one, I have a feeling that this plot development won’t really be explored in the next book either, which is a shame considering how crazy this revelation is.

That’s another thing about this book: half the characters aren’t in it. Because Martin wanted to have this book set at the same time as the next one, with each book showing the experiences of half the characters, you don’t get to see what Daenerys or Tyrion are doing in this one, which is a shame since their storylines are some of the more interesting ones. Still, you do get to see Brienne, Samwell, Jamie and Arya and I generally enjoyed their storylines. In fact, with Jamie in particular, I started to grow quite fond of him, even though he hadn’t done much for me before. He has a nice character arc.

One thing I’d like to mention her is that I’ve always thought that Martin was quite bad at writing female characters and generally quite leery in the way that he did so. In this book, I feel like he started to get just a little bit better at that, though the leeriness reared its head again from time to time. Obviously, he already had Brienne and Arya, who I think he writes well, but there was also a new character called Asha who was really good and I think she reflects this change.

Although, while Asha was a nice addition, this book adds six new point of view characters and there’s just so many characters at this point, many of whom only have a few chapters to themselves, and I just didn’t care about a lot of them. In the earlier books, I’d recognise the names of all the point of view characters and know what to expect with each new chapter. This time, I’d often find that the next chapter was from the POV of a character I’ve never heard of and I’d just groan inwardly at having to get to know another random person. Besides Asha, none of them really enticed me that much.

To some extent, it feels as though the story could and should have been wrapped up in the third book, but that loads of extra plot-elements have just been added to keep things going. Everything here feels quite removed from the first three novels and, to some extent, this feels weird – but you do also get the impression that the world has changed a lot as a consequence of all that’s happened and I did like that.

Overall though, while there are certainly positives, this book was a slog to get through. It’s so long and so many parts felt superfluous to me. It could probably have been half the length and not lost its positives. So many scenes and even whole chapters that just went on and on and seemed to contribute nothing to the overall story. If you’ve read this far into the series, you know what to expect, but this one was especially guilty of it. It’s not a bad book, but it’s far from being a good one.

Rating: 5.1/10

Buy it here.

Today’s book review is something of an anomaly. This is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a ‘book’ I haven’t read all of and the first one I never intend to finish. I’m sure that a lot of people might not even consider it as a ‘book’ or something that fits alongside book reviews in general. But over the years, I have to say, I’ve spent an awfully large amount of time reading Wikipedia.

I wanted to write about it, not only because I have found it to be useful, valuable and fascinating at many times throughout my life, but because I love what it stands for. This was written by the people, for the people and is an enormous repository of information that’s available for free and which hasn’t (yet) been polluted with endless adverts, unlike many other longstanding websites.

As a teenager, I was practically addicted to Wikipedia. Where else could I learn so much about popular culture, religion, history, literature, science, mysteries and a thousand other things? I know that Wikipedia has a reputation for having unreliable information because it can be edited by anybody and while this may be a fair point, there are so many vigorous editors on Wikipedia and the rules of the site do require sources to be cited. I know mistakes slip through the cracks, but this is true of every repository of knowledge and when Wikipedia has been tested against more traditional encyclopaedias, it’s been found that Wikipedia is not significantly less accurate.

One of the most enjoyable ways to spend some free time is to read up on something you’re passionate about on Wikipedia, click on some links to other pages and then go on a journey. It’s easy to forget how much information Wikipedia gives us access to, so I do recommend that you make time to have a look around the Wiki realms. I’m confident that you’ll learn something new and fascinating. In fact, I recommend starting on the page about Wikipedia itself – its fascinating.

I hope we never lose Wikipedia.

Rating: 10/10

Access it here.