Rosie Reviews: He Who Drowned The World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Title: He Who Drowned The World

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Source: NetGalley eARC

Review

He Who Drowned The World is the sequel to the sensational She Who Became The Sun (see my review for that here) and brings the story of The Radiant Emperor to an end. After the events of the first book, Zhu has an army and a mission – to ride on the capital and seize the crown. But they aren’t the only one with a target – the machinations of other players in this game start to unfold as alliances are made and broken, people are betrayed and the desire for revenge and conquest is high.

This book is brutal and dark, not shying away from depicting gritty scenes and horrible deaths. No character could be described as ‘good’, each willing to take whatever steps necessary to achieve their goals. The story cleverly shows how brute strength and battle tactics are equally important as manipulations and mental scheming in rising to the top of this combat.

With the duology based on actual historical events, it could have easily fallen into the trap of having a predictable ending and so losing the suspense of seeing who will be successful. Shelley Parker-Chan expertly navigates this, keeping the tense atmosphere present throughout and the reader doubting what they think might happen.

I think I enjoyed this slightly more than She Who Became the Sun for the simple fact that I knew a little more of what to expect in terms of writing style and approach, which threw me a little bit when I read the first book. I felt a lot more of a connection to the characters this time around and fully drawn into the world. I am excited to read the future books by this author, I love their writing style and handling of intricate stories with multiple characters and threads.

Rating: 4.5/5

Mini-Reviews: Voyage of the Damned, Assassin’s Apprentice, Tokyo Ghoul Vol. 6

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White – 4.5/5

A close contender for my favourite March read, Voyage of the Damned is a fantasy murder mystery where the heirs of 12 kingdoms (each with their own secret power) embark on a ceremonial voyage, but soon start dropping dead. The powerless heir to the weakest kingdom takes it upon himself to investigate. This book was just sheer fun to read from start to end, it balanced the humour in well and the pacing kept me reading beyond the planned read-along sections. The only let-downs were the main character being quite juvenile and one-tracked minded even in the most illogical of scenarios. The ended also didn’t quite work for me due to some of the choices made. Even so, it was still an entertaining and gripping read.

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – 5/5

After having the Farseer trilogy sat on my kindle for ages, I have finally made a start and am disappointed with myself for not starting them sooner. I loved the writing, the world and the characters from the start. It follows the illegitimate son of a prince as he is brought to the palace and must find his place in the world. The story is slow-paced, with a heavy focus on character and world-building. The magic elements are beautifully intertwined with the story, feeling a natural part of this world, and I loved seeing them both in action. I am very excited to carry on reading this trilogy and then all the other books in this world.

Tokyo Ghoul Vol. 6 by Sui Ishida – 4.5/5

Kaneki’s adventures continue in volume 6 of Tokyo Ghoul as he, half-ghoul and half-human, continues to discover the ghoul side of Tokyo, and figure out where he stands in it. This is probably my favourite of the series so far – the story really picks up and we see Kaneki taking more of an active role. It feels like the stakes & threats have increased, and the pacing feels a lot stronger. I am also enjoying seeing more of the ghoul world and their dynamics and hierarchies – it’s interesting to see more in how that society works. I’m still not sure where this series is leading too, but I am curious to find out.  

A Year of Reading Sanderson: Part 1

This year, I have set myself the challenge of catching up on my backlog of Brandon Sanderson books, those that I own but haven’t quite had the time to read yet. This includes the various secret projects released last year, a couple of the series I’ve started but haven’t finished (The Reckoners, Skyward) and the short story collection Arcanum Unbounded, which I’ve been dipping in and out of since it came into my possession. I am making steady progress already, having nearly completed The Reckoners series, but here are some of the standalone books I have finished as well so far this year.

Long Chills and Case Dough by Brandon Sanderson – 4.5/5

The first Brandon Sanderson I read this year, this was also the last book I got my hands on – it came in the Year of Sanderson loot boxes as a ‘Sanderson Curiosity’ and contains a short story he wrote before he was published. I simply really enjoyed reading this. It was short and light – ideal for kickstarting a reading period after a gap where I only really finished audiobooks. The introduction was needed to explain the concept as it was a slightly bizarre take on a noir story. But it worked for me and I had great fun harking back to the noir films and stereotypes in a futuristic setting, and following the mystery it contained. The trouble is, I don’t think I can really say more without spoiling it!

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson – 4.5/5

From the last of the Year of Sanderson books to the first. Tress of the Emerald Sea reads like a fairy-tale. A fairy-tale with epic adventures on a sea of spores. It follows a young woman called Tress who lives on a rock and collects cups. When her love, Charlie, goes missing while travelling, she sets out on a quest to find him. I really enjoyed Tress’ practical character and how gentle the story feels, despite periods of peril. The characters all felt really lovable and I loved the world, particularly the concept of the spores. It felt like we were only touching the surface of potentially stories set here, so I’d be excited if other books were released in this same setting. It was a very readable book and felt like you were being told the story. The premium edition is also gorgeous – I loved the cover and internal images, and it just felt so lovely to hold.

Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson – 4/5

Arcanum Unbounded is a collection of short stories or excerpts from across the Cosmere, split up by the systems within the systems with introductions and post-scripts to each. As someone who is still in the early stages of understanding the Cosmere, the descriptions of each system was actually really helpful in putting it altogether in context, rather than abstract as I had been picturing it. I enjoyed each of the stories – there were some I was already familiar with, and following characters or settings I already knew a fair amount about, as well as completely different worlds and people. There weren’t any stories I didn’t enjoy. The only one I struggled a bit with was The Secret History but I think that was because it’s been so long since I’d read the Mistborn trilogy that I spent a lot of time try to remember references rather than just enjoying the story. All in all, a good solid collection of short stories and I’m excited to see more of these worlds and more of the Cosmere in future.

The Books I Read in March 2024

Spaceships, spirit worlds, and New York city – just a small number of the settings I visited this month. It was quite a variety of reads, from urban fantasy to science-fiction, with a sprinkle of non-fiction too. My favourite book of the month was Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I still don’t know why I didn’t start it sooner. The rest of the books I read were also all pretty good. A couple didn’t quite live up to the expectations I had of them, but otherwise it was another solid reading month.

Audiobook

The Seven Ages of Death by Dr Richard Shephard (narrated by Dr Richard Shephard) – 4/5

The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin (narrated by Robin Miles) – 4/5

ebook

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – 5/5

Print

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White – 4.5/5

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard – 3.5/5

Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao – 3/5

Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson – 4/5

Manga

Tokyo Ghoul Vol. 6 by Sui Ishida – 4.5/5

Going into April, I am currently reading the last of The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson: Calamity. I have also just started the audiobook Pandora by Susan Stokes Chapman. The rest of my reading for the month is still up in the air, I have a few books that I’ve got on a short list, but it’s very much going to be down to what I am feeling like reading. I’m excited to see what those will be.

A Day Out at Gollanczfest 2024

In 2016, I attended one of the earlier Gollanczfest events. This year, I attended my second one and their 10^th anniversary. Gollanczfest is an event hosted by the publisher Gollancz, bringing together their authors and fans for a day of bookish talks and vibes.

It was an early start for me to get to the event for a 9:30 start and to meet the friends I was attending with. Still, luck was on my side (for once!) and I made it in with no transport issues. From the start, the event was well organised. Directions were clear and queues moved quickly.

We began the day collecting our goodie bags & lanyards. The goodie bags consisted of a tote bag, chapter samplers, a pen and two books – one an arc of an upcoming 2024 release, and the other an SF Masterwork. Different bags had a different book combo and I ended up with The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. Maclean (out Aug 2024) and The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. I am very much looking forward to reading both of these. We were then directed to the main panel room for an introduction.

From there, the events begin. There were three strands: The Author Panels, Industry Events and Interactive Events. After much debate with myself, I headed to my first event –  ‘Record Your Own Audiobook’. Being an avid audiobook listener, I was curious to see behind the curtain of what’s involved. Everyone in the session took turns reading two stanzas from Edga Allen Poe’s The Raven, as if we were recording an audiobook ourselves. I volunteered to go first and found it quite fun reading the text in the ‘booth’. Part of me is curious to hear the end result, part of me never wants to hear myself speak.

My second event of the day was the start of a series of panels. Each revolved around a different genre and those I attended were: High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Horror & Science Fiction. Each had a chair asking the authors questions about their work, the genre and, if there was time, questions from the audience (more often than not, time was very short for those!). The success of the panels was quite dependent on the dynamics of the authors and the questions they had to answer. My favourite ended up being, to my surprise (due to it being my least-read genre), the Urban Fantasy panel. All the authors in that had some great discussions to the point where there needed very little input from the chair.

We ended up giving the headline panel a miss as neither authors were ones we read and 5 different sessions later, I for one was pretty tired. A quick browse around the bookshop later (and the purchase of two books: The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Shigidi by Wole Talabi) and then time to head home.

It was a great event. I loved that it still felt like the earlier Gollanczfest at heart, but on a grander scale. The organisation was great – queues moved quickly, I knew where I needed to be and all the information was available. Nothing overran and it just generally had a really nice atmosphere. I have no idea why I haven’t been to more of these, but hopefully they will carry on doing them and I’ll be able to go to future ones.

An Audience with Lucy Worsley on Agatha Christie – A Talk Review

An evening talking about one of the greatest crime writers of all time? That sounds ideal, and it was. In the latter half of last year, Lucy Worsley published her biography of Agatha Christie – Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman. I listened to the audiobook (also narrated by Lucy Worsley) and found it a well-research & detailed look at the life of an interesting woman. It covered all parts of her life, not just the most intriguing (such as her mysterious disappearance) and relates it into Agatha Christie’s fictional work.

The audience with Lucy Worsley was an event of two parts. The first was broad brushstrokes of the book – an overview of Agatha Christie’s life building up to her disappearance and an explanation for it. Having read the book, a lot of information revealed in this section was not new to me but having Lucy Worsley discuss and present it in person, with a presentation that displayed the references & evidence she talked about, added an extra level. She is evidently passionate about the topic and excited to share it. These, alongside being an excellent speaker, made the first part very engaging.

After a brief interval, we dived into the second part of the evening which was a Q&A with control handed over to the audience. Despite my enjoyment of the first part, the second section elevated the evening. We really got to see Lucy Worsley’s love of history come across and she fielded the questions exceptionally well. We covered a variety of topics, including the way to get away with murder (ice knife apparently) and which books most accurately reflected Agatha Christie (those not published under her own name). I was impressed with how Lucy Worsley handled the questions, avoiding extensive comments instead of questions from the audience & adding to her answers to questions which might otherwise not have been that interesting an answer.

All in all, an informative & entertaining evening about an elusive yet incredibly famous woman. I very much enjoyed the event and am looking forward to when I inevitably pick up my next Agatha Christie.  

Mini-Reviews: Good Girl, Bad Blood; Lore Olympus Volume 2; Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson – 4.5/5

I read Good Girls, Bad Blood in two sittings; the sittings only interrupted by the need to sleep and the requirement to work. In this book, Pip & her friends are dealing with the aftermath of the first book and I love that we see those consequences & impacts carried through. It makes the characters feel a lot more rounded to be struggling with PTSD or covering up with humour, and added an extra layer to this book. From the start, it feels quite simple – finding a missing person, but questions & secrets come to light and it seems to be a lot more of a complex mystery than originally thought. Holly Jackson does a great job at pacing her books, revealing things at key moments and tying threads together, that makes for a very engaging read.

Lore Olympus Volume 2 by Rachel Smythe – 4/5

Persephone and Hades’ story continues in the second volume of Lore Olympus. We see them continue to deal with more rumours and scheming while navigating the connection between them. The art continues to be stunning, capturing the emotions of the characters beautifully and contributing to the storytelling in a major way. I really enjoy how the story is modernised, but still seamlessly integrates references to the original setting, such as through the fashion the characters are wearing. I enjoyed seeing more of the other characters, such as Hera, Minthe & Hecate, although I wish some plot lines felt like they were starting to be resolved, I don’t think we’ve had any resolution yet, even for smaller plot points.

Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan – 3.5/5

The adventures of Percy Jackson continue. While these books are very much for a younger audience, Rick Riordan does such a good job of making the content enjoyable to any reader age. They are such fun stories to experience and are quite relaxing to read due to their younger target audience. I really enjoyed how this book allowed us to meet some more of the Camp Half-blood’s members and see some of the side-characters fleshed out a little more. There are some heavy moments and themes tackled, but are tackled well and balance out well with the lighter elements on the book. I am very much enjoyed reading this series, although do still wish I had first read them when I was younger as I think they would have had more of an impact then.

The Books I Read in February 2024

February was another solid month on the reading front. As a lot of the month was spent getting up to date on Stranger Things (in preparation for the play) and Drive to Survive (in advance on the new F1 season) as well as D&D games restarting in full, I didn’t have as much time for reading, but I did manage to fit in some good books. My favourite of the month was Good Girls,Bad Blood by Holly Jackson which I read in two sitting – a very addictive YA thriller.

Audiobook

Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (narrated by Will Poulter) – 4/5

Ebook

Mitosis by Brandon Sanderson – 4/5

Print

Good Girls, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson – 4.5/5

Lore Olympus Volume 2 by Rachel Smythe – 4/5

Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan – 3.5/5

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson – 4/5

Going into March, I am in participating in the current Illumicrate readalong for their January book: Voyage of the Damned by Frances White. I’m also reading Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – finally getting to this series after so long!   I haven’t quite figured out the rest of my tbr for the month, although I know I also want to read Calamity by Brandon Sanderson to finish off The Reckoners series. So it should be another good month for books.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow – a theatre review

Very mild spoilers ahead.

Stranger Things is easily one of my favourite tv shows and I love a theatre trip, so you can imagine my excitement to learn that an official prequel play was showing. Stranger Things: The First Shadow is set before the adventures of the show and takes the viewer back to a slightly older Hawkins, when the adult characters were still in school and dark shadows hadn’t yet touched the town.

Story-wise, the show had a huge balancing act to accomplish – delivering a great prequel story with some of our favourite characters, adding to the show & leading into season 5, while also avoiding contradicting the events & character reactions in the first season and disadvantaging those who aren’t able to see the show when season 5 hits. It also needs to be watchable by those who have not seen the series. In all of this, I think it does a great job (although I am interested to see how some reveals from the play are handled in season 5).

It was a play that felt like an episode from the show. It masterfully took what makes the series so good and translated it to the stage. It is tense, gripping, but also injects humour in all the right places. The actors brought the younger iterations of the on-screen characters to life beautifully and I enjoyed seeing those dynamics and characterisations played out on the stage. Although, I did have trouble reconciling one of the characters to their on-screen persona, particularly with the voice used for them. The production of the play utilises the stage space masterfully (horizontally and vertically) with a large number of effects that really encapsulate the more horror aspects of the show.

The play also hits with a bang. It starts with a cold open which was one of the most impressive things I have seen on stage (and warranted a round of applause from the audience) before launching into the Stranger Things title music which really settles the audience into that Stranger Things space. If the play had ended there, I would have felt like we got value for money, but thankfully it didn’t, and we had another 2 and a half hours of story.

It is a long play but doesn’t feel long, and it really adds to the Stranger Things lore in a way that is exciting for those who have seen it but doesn’t interfere with the enjoyment of the show on its own. While I do know the series inside out, I don’t think you need to have watched it to enjoy the play either. There are definite references which would go over heads, but I think it could work well as an introduction to the series. I’m curious as to what the watching experience would be like watching the play first, I suspect it would only add rather than take away.

If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Everything was well done, even the entrance lobby of the theatre was in theme, and you could tell that so much thought and care had been put into the whole production. I left with so many thoughts and theories, and an urge to go back and rewatch season 4, despite having just finished it in advance of the play. I just wish I didn’t have to wait until 2025 for season 5.

Rosie Reviews: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

Title: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Author: Mark Lawrence

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Source: NetGalley eARC

Review

The Book That Wouldn’t Book is the first in The Library Trilogy by Mark Lawrence. It is centred solely around an infinite library said to hold every piece of writing in existence, spreading for miles and miles underground. At the centre of this story are two people – a boy who has never left the library and a girl who finds herself there after losing everything.

This book is so different to other Mark Lawrence books I’ve read, and yet there was a certain tone in the writing which brought back a sense of familiarity from the Book of the Ancestor series. The whole world felt very much alive and, even after finishing the book, I can still picture the city and library clearly in my head. The library itself was incredible to explore, and it was interesting to see how the society had built up around it.

I really enjoyed how the book explored themes of knowledge and who controls it as well as perceptions of time and reality, and how, at its heart, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn felt like a love letter to books and the worlds and insights that come from them. Everything that happens in this book, every action or choice the characters take, all comes from the books and the infinite library.

The two main character, Livira and Evar, were interesting to meet and follow in their respective, yet opposing storylines. Kept completely separate by the bounds of the library, and yet brought together by it, their connection was a delight to read, and I enjoyed how it was explored. The believability of this connection was key for fully appreciating how the book ended and I think Lawrence pulled it off. The other characters were a bit of a mix – Evar’s family felt a lot stronger in depth than Livira’s friends, but I’m not sure how much of this was a choice to further demonstrate Livira and Evar’s differences in circumstances and personalities.

While there are moments where the plot meanders a bit, it is a beautifully written, very thematic book that raises a lot of interesting questions, all through the experiences of the two central characters. At no point did any of it feel heavy-handed. I feel like it’s a world I would be excited to return to, if just to experience the library again.

Rating: 4/5