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A fantasy novel in which everyone is wolves.

I would have loved this book as a child. Some of the things that bother me from an adult perspective - intrusive dialogue tags, too many adverbs (though aside from that the prose was quite readable); the casual assumption that the reader is Christian - wouldn't have bothered me because I wouldn't have cared; others (wolf behaviour) wouldn't have bothered me because I wouldn't have known any better, and I would have absorbed the misinformation: not an ideal outcome, even if it did mean I enjoyed the book more.

Some of the inaccuracies are plot-driven and inherently unusual, which is fine. Some are weird and distracting but can pretty much be ignored (wolves sweating, and not just on their paws; no red-green colourblindness). But there are a few major problems in the way the wolves were depicted:

1) Unnecessarily sexist (never a good thing in a book, and "everyone is wolves" is absolutely not an excuse; wolves are generally less sexist than depicted here).

2) David Clement-Davies appears to entirely forget about wolves' sense of smell. It's not infrequent that characters hide from other characters, just out of sight, and there's not even a mention of the wind going the other way or how lucky they are not to be sniffed out. Even worse, sometimes a character sees another character that they haven't in a while, and doesn't immediately recognise them because their appearance has changed - and instead of sniffing, they inspect them visually, unsure if it's someone they know or not. This makes no sense. Wolves have good noses, people!

3) On a similar note, a character at one point is secretly pregnant, which among actual wolves is not even remotely possible. Wolves have good noses, people! Whether someone is pregnant or not is, in fact, immediately obvious to the most casual (wolf) observer.

4) Siklas are based on an outdated view of omegas (though to be fair, it might not yet have been outdated in 2002 when the book was written). This isn't just misinformation: it's harmful misinformation, since it perpetuates toxic masculinity; Siklas are depicted as weak, foolish, cowardly, and - especially - looked down upon by their packmates because of this. As with the sexism, this isn't the sort of dynamic you should really be presenting or normalising at all, and especially not in a book for children (even if the characters themselves are respected by the author). "Everyone is wolves" is in no way an excuse: it's not even accurate. Like, at all.

5) Though it's a relatively minor point in the book - a thing that's mentioned but never actually happens in the text - the idea that wolves drive out their young when they get to a certain age is also weirdly and pointlessly inaccurate, especially in a book about love and families? It provides a source of conflict and cognitive dissonance, but that's... kind of unnecessary and David Clement-Davies could have done a better thing with a more accurate depiction there?

I'd be somewhat conflicted about recommending this book. Despite all of this, I did overall enjoy it, and I think a child would have enjoyed it far more. But I'd be especially reluctant to recommend it to a child, because of the misinformation. I guess my conclusion is: if you have a kid who likes wolves, maybe give it to them but also talk to them about the inaccuracies and provide them with actual sources of information as well; and if you are a kid (or adult, or whatever) who likes wolves, just make sure you don't take it as an absolutely accurate source of information, and look up facts in other places as well. If you already know about wolves, be prepared to look past the inaccuracies. And if you don't like wolves, this is absolutely not the book for you.

Selling points: everyone is wolves! they are cute and have tails and sometimes they nuzzle each other and it's great. Also: magic!; humans treated as animals, from an outside perspective; strong focus on family love, with precedence over romantic or sexual attraction; ancient prophecies, mythology, epic events; nuanced depiction of evil, especially for a children's book; environmentalist themes; have I mentioned that everyone is wolves? Sometimes they're puppies.

Warning points: several glaring inaccuracies in the depiction of wolves; unnecessary sexism (though not to a super extreme degree); unnecessary adverbs and dialogue tags; some blood and gore and death and war and violence and stuff; kind of a lot of character death (it's worth stressing again that everyone is wolves, so these are wolf deaths); mention of a dog being beaten, off-screen and in past tense; bit of a tone change during the climax.

(Wolfsaga by Käthe Recheis does a much better job with a very similar premise!)

This is my third Yahtzee Croshaw book, and I'm starting to get the hang of them. Characters who are thrown together through circumstance but remain at odds with one another throughout the book seem to be a staple.

Will Save the Galaxy for Food none-too-subtly satirises the Golden Age of science fiction, which means: as someone who's read a bit of Golden Age sci-fi but isn't extremely familiar with it, I can give it only a limited review. I can say, though, that familiarity with Golden Age sci-fi isn't a prerequisite for enjoying the book.

It is humorously written: a pleasant read, though not an especially deep one. The characters are all pretty much stereotypes, but that's kind of the point. One could make an argument about performative wokeness - I recall a moment when both sexism and "middle-aged white women caught saying something politically incorrect" were mocked in one fell swoop, which is nice on its own but somewhat undercut by the absolute whiteness of the entire cast - but given that a) it's a satire of a very white (sub-)genre and b) every character is kind of a stereotype, that's somewhere between "expected" and "maybe not a bad thing".

Selling points: funny; ...IN SPACE; a male lead and a female lead who never threaten to kiss; worldbuilding elements carried through to their logical conclusions; the thing where someone is constantly leaping from one probably-deadly situation to another and just kind of rolls with it; occasional moral depravity.

Warnings: not the book to go to for deep hard-hitting emotional stuff; indeed, not the book to go for for anything serious; not great on the diversity front either; a whole lot of language that, while it'd pass any censorship filter, is within the context of the book extremely foul; a good degree of senseless violence (wait, hang on, is that a selling point?).

There aren't actually any ghosts in this book. If you're looking for spooky horror/fantasy IN SPACE, this is absolutely not the book for you: all ghosts are purely metaphorical.

What this book actually offers: American-style slavery, racism, intersexism (kind of combined with racism, in this case), whatever -ism goes with mental illness and neurodivergence, transmisia, homomisia, &c. .... IN SPACE.

(I don't mean to imply that it condones these things. Quite the opposite, in fact. But it certainly does portray them.)

The hard sci-fi setting serves more as a backdrop for all this slavery and oppression and whatnot than as a foreground element, despite its plot-relevance; possibly I feel this way because the plot itself takes something of a background role as compared with social themes, relationships, and the constant crushing realities of slavery. Thematically, though, it is important. Even knowing that the vast majority of slaves never escaped, there's a difference - at least from a literary perspective - between being enslaved beneath the open sky with only a lot of distance, a whole bunch of oppressors, and an entire society built around your lack of personhood between yourself and freedom; and being enslaved IN SPACE, with recycled air and the world curving in around you, and literally no freedom anywhere because you're trapped on a spaceship and "a whole lot of distance" just straight-up doesn't exist. The setting does quite a bit to enhance the feelings of hopelessness and inevitability in a subtle way.

It's worth noting that despite its themes and subject matter, An Unkindness of Ghosts is actually surprisingly easy to read. While the violence inherent to the subject isn't glossed over, the worst of it almost entirely takes place off-screen. I wouldn't call it a pleasant book, but the unpleasantness certainly isn't gratuitous, and in fact it generally feels somewhat toned down for readability.

The prose is fluid and interesting, and all the more interesting because of the use of dialects and varied styles of speaking, with differences between various decks of the ship. Rivers Solomon obviously pays a lot of attention to language. Aster is a literal-minded pedant with elevated diction (fair enough: autism does sometimes present this way), which had me worried for the first few pages - I feared Autism Voice and dubious clichés - but as I realised that 1) she has a hell of a lot more character depth than just that and 2) she is only one of many characters with a distinct voice and her literal-minded pedantry and elevated diction don't result in her looking down on those who use figures of speech or speak in dialect, my worries soon faded.

All around an important book and one much worth reading, as long as you can put up with a bit of soul-crushing oppression in your literature.

Selling points: cool lingual stuff; sci-fi-but-also-low-budget-herbal-type medicine; intersex autistic protagonist; slave revolts; psychotic (schizophrenic?) representation with depth; there's a scene with a dog (and nothing bad ever happens to the dog!); transfeminine representation; strong focus on consent in both sexual and medical situations; not nearly as unpleasant to read as one might assume given the subject matter.

Warning points: honest depiction of slavery and all that comes with it; violence, including sexual violence (though especially the latter is mostly off-screen); there's a (consensual, and not particularly graphic) sex scene in there somewhere; the psychological violence is not just off-screen; descriptions of medical implements and procedures (and also of the causes for them: wounds, gangrene, that sort of thing); plenty of references to self-harm and suicidal ideation; semi-graphic on-screen character death; social friction; soul-crushing oppression.

In all honesty, I did not expect this book to be good, even though it's written by Jane Jensen herself. I don't tend to trust media tie-in books, and I trust novelizations even less; if I hadn't seen it used for ludicrously cheap, I'd never have picked it up.

It is good, though. Lucky me: I was pleasantly surprised.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (the book) closely follows the plot of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (the game), to the point where you could really just pick one or the other depending on whether you like reading books or playing point-and-click adventure games more. In every actual plot point and story element, they're pretty much interchangeable. In execution, though, each version plays to the strengths of its medium. The conversion from game to novel was skilfully done: things that work well for games but poorly for prose (several of the puzzles, for example) were streamlined out, while things that work poorly in games but well in prose (internal monologues, psychological character depth) were incorporated seamlessly. Whether writing games or novels, Jane Jensen knows her craft.

Sins of the Fathers is one of my favourite games, and I would strongly recommend it; but if you can't or don't want to play it for whatever reason, this novelization is absolutely a worthy substitute.

If you're already a Gabriel Knight fan, whether it's worth your time or not really depends on how extreme a fan you are. You're not getting much that's new, but you're getting a slightly different angle on the story you already love, with slightly more depth to it. You're getting a little bit of a different experience. And if, like me, you're just generally leery of the quality of novelizations in general, you can quell your fears: at the very least, it's well done.

Selling points: immersive horror; apparently well-researched voodoo; strong sense of setting and characters; acknowledgement of American slavery.

Warnings: immersive horror!; some gore, if I recall correctly; occasional German bits that are just incorrect enough to seriously stand out if you actually know German.

Disclaimers: it's been a while since I've read (or played) this; also, I'm not actually authorised to comment on the portrayal of voodoo/voudoun/&c. I realise there are some harmful tropes surrounding these subjects, and while I feel that it was about as respectful as a voodoo-themed horror book/game (by a white person and with a white protagonist) could be, I'm really not at all qualified to make that judgement.

Most everything I could say about The Real Boy has been said before, and better, by Corinne Duyvis here: disabilityinkidlit.com/2015/04/13/review-the-real-boy-by-anne-ursu/ . I agree with that review in its entirety.

I'll therefore focus only on my personal experiences in reading it. I found Oscar extremely relateable, which is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand: it's awesome to feel so seen by a book, and being able to relate so easily kicks the immersion factor way up. On the other: when Oscar can't deal with a situation I wouldn't be able to deal with either, that immersion turns vicious. One scene in particular, in which Oscar was put in charge of his master's shop with no training, was deeply uncomfortable to read, and threw my emotions so far out of whack that it took me a day or so to recover even after I'd stopped reading.

One other, extremely minor, quibble: the word "Latin" appears once in this book, and is the only indication that it is anything other than secondary-world fantasy. That word therefore felt very much out of place, and (very briefly) broke my immersion.

In general, a good book, and one I'd be happy to recommend.

Selling points: autistic protagonist; wizards; lots of cats; liveable world; immersion; relateable protagonist.

Warnings: see the spoiler-heavy section of Corinne Duyvis' review.

The Way of Kings was in general a pretty decent read once I got into it, and by the end (a rather extreme cliffhanger) I was sufficiently invested that I quite wanted to know what happens next, and would certainly have read the next book in the series if I'd had it available.

That said, it suffers in several points, most notably that it positively oozes with Straight White Male Author Disease. The book is glaringly, painfully cisheteronormative, to the point where it's seriously uncomfortable to read in parts: the sort of thing you'd expect from a 50s sci-fi novel you read mainly out of academic/historical interest, not from a contemporary fantasy which hopes to be taken seriously.

I'd read the rest of the series if I had it available; I might even seek it out, as long as I didn't have to pay for it. But I'd be seriously reluctant to recommend it to others, except in dearth of other reading material.

(Disclaimer: I have internet-known Damon L. Wakes for years, since well before he even wrote this book. Also I supported it while it was crowdfunding, which makes for another potential layer of bias.)

There are two ways to read this book: on its own, or in comparison with Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (which I read only after reading Ten Little Astronauts). There are some things it does better than And Then There Were None; there are some it does worse. Notably, while it's billed as a murder mystery, the pacing is so fast and the environment so immersive that there's really not a lot of time to think about whodunnit or come to one's own conclusions. A gripping read, which leads you straight to the answer and isn't much good as an intellectual exercise.

On a similar note, the book is told in limited third person perspective. Blair's suspicions are not always correct - far from it - but there's little room to form an opinion other than his. On the whole: more of a murder-focused action-adventure than an actual mystery.

Depending on what you're looking for, that fast pace could be a bonus. A major point in its favour (in my opinion) is that, while it starts off with a whole lot of characters with names and jobs and suspect-potential and whatever else, there's no need to keep track of them all because they die off too quickly to matter, and the cast soon shrinks to a manageable size. It is a gripping read, the setting is thoroughly researched and imagined, there is tension, there are twists and turns aplenty. A semi-ambiguous ending adds a subtle hint of chooseable-path flair. Also there's a lot of blood and death and murder and stuff.

"Six Years Stolen", the bonus story, was also enjoyable though less to my taste. A pun wrapped in a Matrix reference, the story itself intrigued me less than the dystopia of its setting and conclusion.

Selling points: action-adventure IN SPACE; immersive; globules of blood floating around in zero-G.

Warnings: not actually much of a murder mystery.

There's a lot to love about this book: the characters, the worldbuilding, the diversity, the quality of representation, the found-family vibe.

The one thing I feel it fails at is immersion - which is interesting, as it stands in stark contrast to several other autistic-voiced books I've recently read. It's worth noting that with all of those, the deep immersion and emotional intensity made them, at times, difficult to read. Failure to Communicate, by contrast, feels a lot lighter. It's a fun read. Depending on what you're wanting at the moment, that could be good or bad: light and fun definitely has its place, especially when deep and hard-hitting is too much to handle.

My edition also had a distinctly noticeable number of typos. It certainly wasn't unreadable, but I did find it distracting: it could definitely have used another round of proofing.

Selling points: #OwnVoices autistic narrator; nuanced characterisation; diversity in both the human and non-human subsets of characters; bi and polyamorous representation; respectful handling of mental illness even in a villain; found family; anti-fascist vibes.

Warnings: some typos; sequel-thirsty ending; sometimes Xandri makes bad decisions and you have to watch the consequences of her mistakes.

(Disclaimers: Jae Waller is an internet acquaintance of mine, with whom I became acquainted before reading the book. Also, I am not authorised to speak on the portrayal of the indigenous cultures in the book - particularly not to what extent the handling is appropriative/exploitative vs. respectful - and as a result I will be ignoring that aspect entirely. I will mention that colonialism is portrayed but not condoned. I will also mention that while magic is not unique to any one culture in the book, the type and distribution varies between demographics. Make your own judgements on whether that's a problem - or better yet, ask a Native Canadian, ideally one from the Northwest Coast.)

Though I can't comment on the real-world impact of the portrayal, I can happily judge the handling of culture in general in a fantasy context. There's a lot to love about this book - the characterisation, the dialogue which manages to be informal without feeling overly anachronistic - but the cultural complexity is easily my favourite aspect. It isn't just that each culture feels real and distinct, or the complex ways in which they interact - it's in the way the characters each individually interact with their cultures (and others'). No character is a stereotype of their culture. A culture's values, religion, &c. shape those of the characters belonging to them, but do not determine them. The writing style makes it a pleasant and easy read, but it's this depth that makes it an interesting one.

There was one aspect that I liked less, though it might be a matter of personal preference. Slightly veiled spoilers follow:

There is a sex scene.

This isn't, in itself, necessarily bad. Nor is it especially graphic or anything; but nonetheless, I found it uncomfortably intimate, especially given the characters' closeness beforehand (to wit: not all that close). There was enthusiastic consent on both sides, but perhaps because I failed to empathise with Kateiko's attraction to the other party, reading it felt... weird and unpleasant. In the same vein, I was left wondering why. It had to do with Kateiko wanting to feel wanted, but that wasn't clear in the moment, and I felt the scene itself was missing an important emotional hook.

This feeling was only strengthened by Kateiko's taking an abortive poison with hella side effects the next day to prevent pregnancy. I figure if you're going to spend the next day miserable with pain and rash and fever, the sex has really got to be worth it, and I don't feel it was adequately explained that - or why - it was.

Of course, it is very possible that this is just because Kateiko is more interested in sex than I am; this would be supported by her conversations with Iannah, who doesn't understand Kateiko's attractions either. There's a big range of sexual attraction out there, and it could be that a reader who's more similar to Kateiko in this regard might find this scene more natural.

This is a relatively minor quibble, though, and overall I enjoyed the book very much and am quite looking forwards to reading the rest of the series when it comes out.

Selling points: cultural diversity; fantasy violence treated with appropriate seriousness; likeable characters; magic.

Warnings: graphic death of unnamed horses; not a whole lot of diversity in terms of anything other than culture, despite lots of characters in varying degrees of minorness (I'm holding out hope that Iannah will be confirmed queer in a sequel, but as of now there's nothing, nor was disability visible even in the background); casual alcoholism (called out once, but not seriously addressed).

All too often, anthologies are something of a mixed bag, which rather complicates the process of reviewing them. Not so with Ada Hoffmann's Monsters In My Mind, which is consistently excellent. It's worth noting that the poetry is no exception to this, despite the fact that I'm not much of a poetry person: it's rare I find a poem I truly enjoy, but here we are.

The consistency of quality does make it difficult to pick out favourites, but stand-outs include "Centipede Girl" (on losing oneself, and the desperate loneliness of being covered in bugs); "Mama's Sword" (on the psychological consequences of Dungeons-&-Dragons-type adventures); "Moon Laws, Dream Laws" (a really nifty combination of fantasy religion and hard science fiction); and "Turning to Stone" (a poem about autistic shutdown/catatonia).

Selling points include queer and neurodiverse representation. Warnings are harder to assign in an anthology, since what may warn you off of one story will not apply to another. One story is sexually explicit, but it is clearly labelled as such and easily skipped if desired.

The edition I read does have an extremely tiny font size, which may make it inaccessible for some readers. However, I believe there's been a second printing with the font size enlarged.