This is the second book in the Thrawn trilogy novels, all of which continue the story of Star Wars after the end of the original movie trilogy, but take the plot in a completely different direction to what Disney would later do with the sequel trilogy. Having read two of the three of these now, I can say that they are typically much more slower paced than the more action packed movies, but that they offer a little more depth and character development, which I appreciate quite a lot.

This novel is really all about an old fleet of ships that was lost after an accident years ago, but which were all extremely powerful. Talon Karrde, the smuggler who got caught up in the events of the first book (along with Mara Jade) knows where to find this abandoned armada, and of course both the New Republic and the Imperial remnants are keen to get their hands on these ships, because they could help tip the balance of power.

While the hunt for that fleet lies as the central point of tension at the heart of the novel, there were two other aspects that I found to be more interesting. The first of these dealt with Princess Leia agreeing to meet with a person named Khabarakh of the Noghri species (who are loyal to the emperor). This species is portrayed very sympathetically and this sub-plot does a brilliant job of showing why ordinary people would have followed the Empire, which of course helps the whole Star Wars universe to feel more nuanced.

Another thing I really liked about this one was that Luke Skywalker got a chance to meet Joruus C’baoth – the dark Jedi clone ally of Thrawn. Though he’s older and more mature than he is in the movies, Luke is still a young man, and seemingly the last Jedi in existence, so it only makes sense that he’d be drawn to C’baoth and want to see him as a mentor figure. Luke’s naiveté contrasted against C’baoth’s cynical attempts to manipulate him into turning to the Dark Side makes for pretty interesting reading, as Luke spends several chapters on his planet with him.

Of course – one of the biggest appeals of this book (just as with its sequel) is Thrawn himself. It’s no wonder people refer to it as the Thrawn trilogy, because he’s such a fantastically written villain. He really comes across as a man just trying to do his duty, and doing it incredibly well. His conflict with C’baoth ends up making them both feel more believable (and again, gives more nuance to the world) and the fact that he’s almost only ever seen through the eyes of Pellaeon (a member of his crew) helps to give the character a sort of mysterious, unknowable quality.

Meanwhile, although I didn’t think much of her in the previous book, Mara Jade was used more interestingly here. This novel brings her into direct contact with Thrawn, who of course is familiar with her thanks to her previous association with the Empire, but who is also untrusting of her because of their encounter in Heir to the Empire. The two have an interesting, vaguely antagonistic dynamic, and I absolutely loved it.

I think I preferred this one just a smidgen more than the first book and I don’t think anyone who read Heir to the Empire would be disappointed with this book. If you’re hungry for a deeper look at Star Wars’ alternative Legends timeline, then I recommend reading this. Timothy Zahn is a talented writer.

Score: 8.4/10

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Frankenstein is one of my favourite books, and the star attraction of this manga anthology is an adaptation of Mary Shelly’s original novel by the iconic horror manga artist, Junj Ito. The story is adapted pretty darn faithfully and I think that his art offers a fantastic visual interpretation of events. Something that I was particularly impressed with was the design of Frankenstein’s creature himself who looked truly monstrous in a way that is very distinct for any other designs I’ve seen for him.

Although I acknowledge him as a very flawed person, I am very much an apologist for Frankenstein’s creation. Junji Ito, however, gave me the most hateful version of the character I’ve seen so far. It’s interesting, because he doesn’t deviate far from the source material, and yet he still manages to portray the events in such a way that makes the bitterness and hatred his primary driving motivation. I know these emotions are driving him in the novel too, but Ito manages to make him seem much more repugnant than usual, which made it feel quite different to the story as I am familiar with it.

Frankenstein isn’t the only thing in this anthology though – even if it is what has been used to sell copies. It also contains a number of stories about a school boy named Oshikiri. Oshikiri lives alone in a creepy old house while his parents have business that keeps them away from him. These stories were really weird, and typically dealt with evil spirits or dark paralell universe where a murderous version of Oshikiri lived.

While I typically enjoyed the Frankenstein adaptation more, I have to admit that the Oshikiri stories were probably creepier overall. One of them (Neck Spectre) has him killing one of his classmates and then finding the body distorted in terrifying ways, while another, The Bog of Living Spirits, had teenagers drowning in a local bog and dealt with really weird and obsessive behaviour. I think the stories were more unsettling in general because they had the energy of people not really taking teenagers seriously, and then kids losing their lives because of it. It was also somewhat hard to tell how much was real and how much was in Oshikiri’s mind. Something supernatural definitely seemed to be happening, but I thought he was quite an unsettling character.

Towards the end of the anthology, there were some shorter standalone pieces. One about a girl turning into a doll was really kind of unpleasant to read and pretty sad. Meanwhile, there were also some bits about the author’s dog which added some light comic relief to the overall very dark and twisted collection of tales in this anthology… but even that ended on a very sombre note.

If you like the story of Frankenstein, but find it hard to read classic literature, then this manga may be the perfect way for you to experience the story in written form. The additional standalone stories feel like supplementary extras, but I don’t say that to suggest that they are lower quality – only that they are much shorter and don’t have as much time to leave an impact as Frankenstein. Oshikiri stuff is also interesting because it contains every one of the stories about that character, but it feels like a ‘best of’ collection, because you never really truly have the details of his life properly explained… but perhaps that’s just to add to the eerie feeling. If you’re a fan of manga and horror, I recommend checking this out.

Rating: 8.6/10

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Although Winnie himself first appears in the Milne’s poetry collection When You Were Very Young, this book is really the first outing for Pooh and his friends. I absolutely loved it too. While I find that some children’s literature that tries to be whimsical fails to truly capture my imagination, that was not the case at all for this book – I was completely charmed throughout.

There’s not that much of an overall story to the book, but each chapter gives you an adventure (or misadventure) in the lives of Pooh, Christopher Robin, Piglet, Rabbit, and the rest of the animals in Hundred Acre Wood. Sometimes these are just light-hearted silly things like Pooh getting stuck in a rabbit hole, but other times there are slightly more tense situations, like when the woods are flooded during storm.

Regardless of what’s happening at any point in the book, each time I read any of it, it was like a trip to a world that I liked to exist in. The illustrations by E. H. Shepard which appear throughout the book really reinforced this too, with delightfully charming scenes showing Rabbit’s underground home, or the characters having fun together in a clearing in the woods.

What I admired the most about this book was that I felt it had perfectly captured two aspects of childhood. On the one hand, it’s all completely rooted in childhood imagination (after all, every one of the characters is based on a toy owned by the real Christopher Robin) with the ways that the characters think about the world mirroring the mindsets of the youngest children – but it also captures that carefree feeling that you have when you’re very young. The way they fill their days captures how it felt to have what seemed like an infinite period of time to yourself over the summer holiday,

Although it’s simple in a lot of ways, there’s very little that I could say against this book. It’s one of the best things that I’ve read in a while and is a wonderfully beautiful piece of writing. It even addresses Pooh’s name changing from Edward to Winnie, which I appreciated since it wasn’t necessary but feeds into the authenticity of the book. I definitely recommend reading this if you like any children’s literature.

Rating: 9.1/10

I’m sure most people have a mental image of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and I don’t think that it would be quite as well known as it is without this Shakespeare play. I imagined that that scene would be the grand finale of the play, but as it happens, it actually occurs around the middle, so Julius Caesar himself is actually dead for quite a lot of the play that is named after him.

What I quite enjoyed about this play was that it had political commentary that I found to be quite entertaining in a way that I don’t often feel Shakespearean stuff is. Specifically I’m talking about a scene where, just after Caesar is murdered, Brutus delivers a speech to explain how he and his co-conspirators justified the assassination, which gets all the common people on his side, only for Mark Anthony to give a speech immediately afterwards that explains why he thinks it was awful – which then prompts the general public to then find the assassination abhorrent. It gave me a good laugh.

Also, as much as I did not think that Caesar himself was a sympathetic character, I do find his line of “Et tu, Brutus?” (translated, that means “you too, Brutus?”) which he says just before being killed, when he notices that his friend Brutus is among the assassins, quite moving. It seems there’s a good chance that Shakespeare just took this quote from another source (and I suppose it’s possible that it came from history) but I thought there was something kind of profoundly sad about that and it stuck with me

I have to admit though, that I did start to find the story a little less interesting as it went on. I was invested at the start, and when Caesar is killed, and then when the public are being told how to feel about it – but the political upheaval that follows his death wasn’t quite as engaging for me as the first half of the story. It wasn’t awful by any means, but it did feel like the main thing I was reading the play for had already happened.

All things considered though, this is definitely one of the better Shakespeare plays that I have read and one that I definitely recommend if you’re interested in the Roman Empire, or want to read more of Shakespeare’s historicals.

Rating: 7.8/10

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While all of the previous Little House books (other than Farmer Boy) had quite an innocent element of childhood wonder to them, it’s in this, the fifth book, that reality hits home in a pretty major and sad way. Right at the start, we find that Mary has gone blind since the end of the last book (just as she did in real life) – and there’s one other development that I won’t spoil, but which I found to be pretty heart-breaking.

What I enjoyed most about this book was it’s focus on Charles’ time working as a bookkeeper for a railroad company. Not only was the insight into the way work was structured and jobs completed back then all pretty fascinating to me, but what was most interest was reading about the very tense situations that Charles ended up getting into. It was much darker than anything that happens in the previous book and shines a light on the difficulties that someone might face as a bookkeeper – even though you might have assumed that would be a relatively safe job.

As with many of the books in this series, there’s a really beautiful description of one of the family’s Christmases. They’re all a little bit different, but what each of the books’ Christmases have in common is that they perfectly sentimental and festive. I intentionally always read these books at Christmastime because of how great these segments are, and I was not disappointed.

At the end of the book, you get to read about a happier time for the Ingalls family, which is fortunate, as it would probably have been too bleak if it hadn’t – and I appreciate that Laura Ingalls Wilder could only write about what actually happened in her life without deviating from reality too much. On a similar note, I find Caroline increasingly negative, offering comments about practically everything that rarely seems agreeable – but though it is annoying, I guess that’s just what she was like.

While for me, the first book is my favourite and none of the others have ever come close, if you liked all the first four, you’ll most likely enjoy the fifth as well. Meanwhile, it’s advantage over the third book (Little House on the Prairie) is that it doesn’t lean too closely into any uncomfortable attitudes about the indigenous peoples of America. I’m pleased that the feeling of childlike wonder isn’t lost altogether (as it is in Farmer Boy) but it’s a decidedly more sombre read. This isn’t bad, it just captures another aspect of life, but it is a noticeable change. All in all, I was still quite happy with it.

Rating: 8.1/10

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This is one of those novels that everybody has heard of, but I have to be honest and say that before reading it recently, I didn’t really have any idea about what the storyline was. Yes, I knew it was a story of a trip around the world, but I didn’t know the context of that trip – as it turns out, it’s essentially just that an eccentric rich man decides to make a bet with some of his rich friends that he’d be able to make such a journey in that timespan. It’s fun and it’s silly, but I really quite enjoyed the journey.

Phileas Fogg himself was probably my favourite thing about the book. He’s kind of ridiculous in a way, but that makes him quite funny and endearing. He’s completely unflappable, and even though he continuously encounters serious hurdles and dangers on his journey, he always manages to find a solution – and usually one that involves spending enormous amounts of money. I reckon some readers might find his arrogance kind of annoying, but I loved him and thought he was great.

Along the way, Phileas Fogg is contrasted against his employee Passepartout who kind of acts as his foil. Though he is somewhat bumbling, he very much seems as though he’s there to be a “normal person” and ensure that readers have someone they can at least partially relate to. Though you’ll probably spend a decent amount of time feeling bad for him, since Phileas is not a good boss, or you’ll be laughing at him for being kind of stupid. Two other characters join them as it goes along too, and I found them both pretty likeable.

Another big appeal is that it really goes into a lot of detail about how somebody could have realistically made the journey it describes at the time that Jules Verne was writing. It also kind of reads a little like a piece of travel writing, with a lot of information about where the characters go. I found this all pretty interesting and I appreciated the fact that Jules Verne was able to insert random information that he knows in a way that was not boring (unlike, for instance, Victor Hugo, with his shoe-horned essays).

In the earlier parts of the novel, I had the impression that it was a little too pro-colonialism – although by the time I get to the end of the novel, I came away thinking that it was actually quite progressive in a number of ways. It all relates to instances that I can’t mention without spoiling some major plot developments, but generally, it did a few things that I’m sure certain readers would criticise as “woke” if they were included in a modern piece of media.

Altogether, this short and enjoyable read. The story was engaging and ranged from being pretty funny at times, to genuinely quite intense. The idea that inspired the story is quite an interesting one, and the cast of characters are all pretty likeable.

Rating: 8.2/10

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After reading the previous novel, Winter’s Heart, I found myself starting to get a little burnt out on The Wheel of Time. It just felt like nothing especially interesting had happened in a long time, and while the story was stagnating, Robert Jordan seemed to be taking every opportunity he could to have the women getting naked together and the men complaining about how hard it is to understand women. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the books because they were comfortable and familiar and I was invested in the characters, but it was starting to feel somewhat aimless.

Fortunately, this novel felt a little more interesting – even if the ending of the previous novel, and its implications, were barley explored. There was a lot of Aes Sedai focus, and a look at the ongoing struggles between the two factions. The end of it made me roll my eyes a little (primarily because it felt kind of repetitive), but I still look forward to seeing what comes of it and the political nuance of the Aes Sedai is easily the most interesting thing in the whole series for me. It feels true to life, and in kind of a sad way.

Speaking of interesting politics, I also quite enjoyed Elayne’s portion of the story. The consolidation of her power is equally difficult and believable and with her pregnancy in the mixture as well, it all felt like her story was moving forward quite nicely. Perrin also ends up becoming even more of a monster than he was, and Mat spends time with the woman he believes he’s destined to marry, but their storylines aren’t quite so interesting to me.

I think it says a lot that I find Wheel of Time reviews especially hard to write – for a longer book like this, I should have lots of points to discuss, but there’s often not a huge amount that happens, and events of one book often aren’t hugely distinct from events of another. I’m kind of pleased that I’m getting closer to the end, but it does also speak to the quality of the books that I am still going and want to find out what happens. Crossroads of Twilight, at very least, feels like it is moving the plot towards that conclusion, and I appreciate it for that.

Rating: 7.1/10

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In the UK, there’s an enormous distance between the working class and the wealthiest members of society – this is even more true now than when this book was written in 2011, but everything Owen Jones wrote over a decade ago is still very insightful and valid to this day.

This book helped me to realise something that I had never considered before – demonisation and prejudice against the working class is considered much more acceptable than any other form of discrimination. It provides countless examples of politicians and public figures saying some pretty hateful things about the least fortunate members of society, and highlights that if similar remarks had been made against women, or people of minority ethnic backgrounds, they’d likely have received at least some negative backlash (though increasingly less so these days), but when it’s aimed at poorer people, they essentially get a free pass.

This problem extends into the media at large and the book is filled with examples of lies or misrepresented truths which have been used to make working class people look bad or to feed into the myth that they deserve to be poor. Then when this narrative becomes accepted by ordinary people, they end up voting for political parties which act against their interest and want to cut support for initiatives that support the working class. People end up thinking that there are other, bad working class people who are different from them, ignoring the fact that they are all unified by the fact that they are suffering from the austerity measures put in place by governments who are afraid to properly tax the wealthiest 1% of society.

Even as somebody who is relatively will informed about this subject already, I found it very insightful. I, for instance, had never really thought too much about the cultural ramifications of characters like Vicky Pollard and Lauren Cooper in Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show respectively – to me they’ve always just been ridiculous characters that are far removed from reality. However, Owen Jones rightly points out that they are rooted in the “chav” stereotype and ultimately feed into to this widespread demonisation of working class people.

What was especially eye-opening was that it showed how politicians, even Labour politicians who are supposed to be aligned with the working class, have come out with some really horrible remarks and faced no consequence. It’s quite depressing stuff, but I think it’s something that everybody should read, because it’s important that everyone is aware of this problem.

Rating: 8.2/10

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This book was bought for me by a friend of mine last year as she thought it was something I’d quite like – it turns out, she was absolutely right. A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a story about a monk and a robot who become friends – and that’s essentially it, but I feel like it also provides a wonderful perspective on the world.

Dex, a monk, finds that they are increasingly unfulfilled with their life in the city, as they feel disconnected from nature, and so they head out into the countryside in order to literally “touch grass” as people say, and reconnect with the world. Once they reach a more rural locale, they adopt a cosy lifestyle, travelling around and serving tea to people as part of a religious practise, but still they don’t quite feel comfortable and content with their life.

This is when they meet Mosscap, a robot. This is quite significant in the context of its world, because within the setting, robots have not interacted with human beings for generations. After they collectively gained sentience, they decided that they no longer wanted to live amongst humans and their artificial constructs, and instead chose to live in the wilderness, as they’d never really been exposed to the nature before. I loved this concept and thought it was a wonderfully unique approach to artificial intelligence.

Dex is a somewhat cynical person and struggles to find a sense of purpose in life. Mosscap, on the other hand, seems to be completely at peace and accepts its place in the universe (‘it’ by the way, is Mosscap’s preferred pronoun, and is unperturbed by the idea that it is a ‘thing’) and while Dex is initially irritated by its presence, over time, a bond grows between them and it’s a journey I was glad to be along for.

It’s a cosy, low-stakes novel about a person learning to become more comfortable with themselves. I won’t spoil how it ends, but Dex’s revelations are the kinds of things that I feel like would help quite a lot of people I know, or at least help them feel valdated. I also really appreciated its perspective on humanity’s position in the natural world, as I thought it was very comforting and agreeable. It was very different to any other sci-fi novel I’ve read before, but in the best of ways. Its optimism and positive values are particularly refreshing in the modern state of the world.

Rating: 8.9/10

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I’d had a copy of this play for sometime, and recently I finally got around to reading it. Although I was aware of the Henry IV plays that preceded it, I didn’t really realise that they (and also Richard II) set up a lot of the events in this play, and so I was essentially starting a series with the fourth and final instalment. Nonetheless, this wasn’t apparent as I started reading (which speaks to its strengths) and I suppose to some extent, you’re always starting a story in the middle whenever you read something that’s based on real history.

I’ve often been averse to starting Shakespearean histories, as I’ve been worried that they might be a little too dry for me – and of course, I know that he was always writing to reinforce the version of history that was most favourable to Elizabeth I. However, when I finally got around to reading it, I found that my concerns were totally misplaced. I enjoyed this story quite a lot, to the extent that I’d say that it was one of the better Shakespeare plays that I’ve read so far.

The story is relatively simple: amidst growing tensions, Henry V grapples with the idea of invading France. In the end he does so, and there’s a lot of drama around the war (of course). Nonetheless, and despite the obvious pro-English bias, I actually found myself feeling pretty invested in this story. I think it as just a classic case of the writing being top notch, and if something is well written, I sincerely believe that anything can be engaging.

Speaking of the quality of the writing, “Once more unto the breach” has its origins in this play, which is pretty cool, and “band of brothers” also appears to have come from here too. As someone who always enjoys learning the etymology of words and phrases, this is something I always like about reading Shakespeare.

Also, while it deals with a lot of historic figures, Shakespeare still has a little bit of fun, as he always does. The characters Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph all stood out to me as particularly endearing, and they also happen to be unique Shakespearean characters. These soldiers add a element of comedy to the play, as they’re all quite ridiculous in one way or another and contrast nicely against the dramatic speeches about war and whatnot.

As I write this review, I find it genuinely difficult to put my finger on exactly what it was I liked about it. In the end, I think it’s just a fantastic combination of good writing with interesting characters. If, like me, you might have overlooked this for fear of Shakespearean histories being too dry, I strong recommend giving it a go.

Rating: 8/10

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