DNF @ page 138 (Chapter 10). I was definitely enjoying this, and I will probably take it back out of the library in a few months and try and finish it off, but I just wasn't feeling drawn back to the book so there's no point it sitting by my bed while I ignore it. Included below is the partial review I'd written so far:

I struggle with short stories, even though I really like them in theory, because if I don't love one of them, I'm not pulled into the next one. That's a personal thing though, not an issue with anthologies or this anthology specifically.

I would have loved a table of contents with some little story summaries, or even just separating it out. I read them consecutively, and it was a little weird to orient myself in the story each time because because the vibe from story to story was so different that I had to adjust my mindset and understand the setting. I did like the variety a lot though.

Throttle: 4 stars. Seriously eerie. I find human nature way scarier than the supernatural. I finished this one and flicked back to the start to work out what I missed. The descriptions were really vivid and created a really strong sense of atmosphere and setting. The theme of losing family was scarier than any haunting could have been.

Dark Carousel: 4 stars. I immediately highlighted the reference to "Manx in Christmasland in Colorado". Creepy fucker. Manx, if you don't know, is a character in Joe Hill's NOS4R2, and was super creepy. My review of NOS4R2 is here ( https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2019/08/30/review-nos4r2-by-joe-hill/ ) and it's definitely worth a read. Anyway, about this story. Dark Carousel was creepy too. It was a little slow to start, but built up to a really, truly horrifying chase scene in the end, and had a really lasting ending.

Wolverton Station: 2 stars. I felt like Wolverton Station was trying to teach me a lesson, but one that I totally missed/misunderstood. I ended the story feeling a little confused and a lot underwhelmed. It just didn't resonate with me at all, but it was definitely skilfully written.

By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain: 3.5 stars. This short story didn't scare me, it just kind of made me feel sad. I wanted to know more in the end, too. I liked the characters a lot, but the plot was a bit confusing and felt aimless to me. It also felt like it ended a little too soon, and almost would have been better with an ending like Dark Carousel. It didn't help that I totally misunderstood it at first and spent half the story thinking one of the characters was inexplicably and un-explainedly a robot. That's on me, I was being stupid, but it did not help me feel less confused.

More to come, maybe?

The girl in the blade stares back with murder in her eyes. I love her.

Rating: 5 stars!

I accidentally read this whole book in one go after starting it in a queue when I was stuck without a book. My full review is available here from 09/12/19.

Thanks to Hannah Capin, Netgalley and Penguin Random House for my arc of this book.

I loved this book. If you like dark, dark books where you have to set your morality aside at the door, then you'll love Foul is Fair and you'll love Jade and her coven. These girls are out for revenge, and they'll do anything to get it. The timescale seems a little far-fetched, it only takes something like two weeks for Jade to infiltrate, manipulate and destroy these boys, but honestly that's pretty in-keeping with the ridiculous time-scale in Macbeth so I'm fine with it. I love Macbeth and this book is Macbeth rewritten with female power in mind.

All of the characters in this book are inhuman, witches and monsters and killers, and maybe that's why it's so easy to suspend your morals and enjoy this tale of revenge. I wanted Jade to get her revenge, and if she'd roped me into this, I'd be right there with her. It's over the top, but it's meant to be, violent and gruesome and downright evil, and it still manages to be funny in places and empowering too as Jade re-invents herself from victim to killer.

This book was a wild, fucked up read, and I hope there's more from Hannah Capin coming. I'll be adding Dead Queen's Club to my to buy list as soon as I can find a UK link to it.

Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/02/26/wicked-as-you-wish-by-rin-chupeco-(review)

I really wanted to like this book, but I just... didn't. I didn't like the characters (except for maybe Cole, who's barely in it anyway). I didn't like the writing style, and I didn't like the plot execution. The more I think about this, a couple of days after reading it, the more disappointed I am, I think. The premise itself was really really interesting, and the world-building could have been amazing, but there was just something missing. From what I've read, this book was the author's longest running story, and a labour of love. I definitely get that impression, but I kind of feel like maybe because the world was so well-built inside the author's head, the information didn't translate onto the page. If I'd been eased into the world, I would have adored it, but instead I spent most of the time I was reading it just confused about who was who and what was going on.

The plot itself was interesting, and there were a lot of mysteries I wanted to know the answers to, unfortunately I didn't want to read the book to find them because the execution just wasn't there. I didn't even really understand the ending, and thinking back I don't really know if I could sum the story up. The characters were really fascinating and diverse, but the banter between them was uncomfortable and took up too much space. I didn't form an emotional connection with any of the characters and the tone just felt... off? I couldn't connect to the writing, and I could see where it was supposed to be funny but it didn't quite land.

I love what this book was trying to do, and I can tell that there's been a lot of love and thought put into the story, it just didn't work for me. It's super, super diverse and I loved the Filipina MC and the culture that was jam-packed into it, and I will probably look for the sequel, because there were mysteries laid out in the story that I do want the answers to, and the end, while as confusing, was intriguing too. But it'll probably be a library loan or a discounted ebook pick up for me, rather than a preordered new release.

Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/never-say-die,-by-anthony-horowitz-(alex-rider-reread-#10)/

Never Say Die is a book that I'll always be emotionally connected with. I think it's pretty clear that the Alex Rider series was a huge part of my childhood, a huge part of my teenage years (shout out to 13 year old me and her Alex Rider fanfiction - I hope you never see the light of day again!) and it's still a huge part of my adult life. When Never Say Die released in 2017, it had been six years since the 'last' Alex Rider book. I was in my final year of university, writing my dissertation and getting a full time job. And one day I was on Amazon and it popped up with 'you may like' and it was an Alex Rider title that I had never heard of, that was being released three months later. I genuinely screamed. Alex Rider, as I've talked about, has been my comfort reads, and it felt like destiny that I was getting another Alex Rider novel during the most stressful period of my entire educational life. And when I read it, it felt like coming home.

Ordinarily, the trope of 'this character died but then miraculously might be fine' as a plot point normally annoys me as a way to get characters invested in a story again but I'm going to let it slide because I do honestly believe it's the only thing in the world that would have brought Alex back into espionage at this point in his incredibly traumatic young life. (Incredibly traumatic, Anthony Horowitz please leave the boy alone). I'm also letting it slide because honestly I think it was done really well. If everything had immediately been resolved within one chapter, I would have been furious, instead we're drawn into Alex's hope and his exploration as he tries to find out if Jack is alive or whether he's being drawn into a trap.

The biggest thing that stood out to me in Never Say Die is the incredible depression rep. Alex is weeks out from losing the last parental figure he had, his whole life as been uprooted and he's been taken across the pond to America to his new life. Everything is different and that would be hard enough if he wasn't buried in grief. The way it's portrayed felt very real to me. Alex was lying to everyone to try and 'prove' that he was recovering, and his lack of interest in homework, school and his social life was approached in a very honest and fair way. It just felt very true to Alex's grief, but also to the feeling of being unmoored that would come from a teenager having a year of his life disrupted and endangered, and then feeling responsible for the death of his caregiver. Considering this book is for young teens, I think it was very deftly done.

The plot itself is brilliant. As soon as I started re-reading it I kept remembering amazing things that were coming up and it lived up to my memories. I was starting to hit burn out a little with the series, and this entry really pulled it all back. I loved it, and I'm hyped all over again for Nightshade! Next week it's me sobbing over Yassen Gregorovich hours!

Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/03/24/tigers,-not-daughters-by-samantha-mabry-(review)/

I was blown away by this book. Considering I had absolutely no expectations going into it, I felt intoxicated by the prose. I’m usually a little leery of reading books focused solely on grief. I’m very, very easily upset by books (and by most things, I’m baby) so I started this book with a heavy amount of caution. It was handled beautifully. The writing was musical and powerful, and handled the extremely dark topics that this book covered with a deft touch. More than that, I loved that the characters felt absolutely and unrelentingly real. They were flawed, and that’s what made them perfect narrators. There’s nothing I love more than female characters who have human, ugly sides, not just their good, beautiful sides.

Each of the girls is processing Ana’s death in their own way, and it leads to a fractured and complicated narrative split across Jessica, Iridian and Rosa’s perspectives, a year after Ana died. The relationships between them are heavy and strained by grief and by the trauma of living in their family home, now shadowed by the emotional ghost of their lost mother, and the more physical ghost of their sister. We meet Ana through her sisters’ memories of her, rather than from her own perspective, and I was amazed by how Samantha Mabry managed to create such a whole and complete character from little snippets of her life. We know Ana by the end of the book, and know that she’s dedicated to protecting her family, and raising them in their mother’s absence while still trying to be herself. It’s a hard balance to find, and when the weight falls across the surviving sisters, they struggle to take it.

Iridian is haunted more than her sisters, by something that she can’t bring herself to talk about, and she’s trying to find herself in Ana’s romance novels and in her own writing – desperate to create a story of her own and a world that she alone has power over. Rosa believes Ana has been reincarnated in an escaped hyena, and will risk anything to find her sister’s spirit and protect it from the rest of the community who live in fear of the beast. Jessica is Ana 2.0. She wants to be just like her sister. She takes her sister’s room, her make up, her clothes. She takes her sister’s abusive boyfriend too, punishing herself for not being enough like Ana.

The prose itself is as harsh and beautiful as the girls it describes. I was astounded by the way that Samantha Mabry managed to fit the prose so perfectly to the tone of the story, lyrical and soft in places and razor sharp and uncomfortable in others. Where this book could have been suffocatingly sad, the Torres sisters were fighters and they drove the story upwards. I couldn’t look away because I needed to see their futures and I needed to see them empowered. They brought a glimmer of hope into the story even when they weren’t feeling it themselves, and Tigers, Not Daughters is a tale of female strength and empowerment that I could never have expected. I think Ana would be proud of her sisters.

Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/secret-weapon,-by-anthony-horowitz-(alex-rider-reread-#12)/

I’m not usually a huge fan of short story collections, but I’m giving them a try in 2020 after reading a couple of incredible ones. The stories were fun (and I’ve broken them down below) but they did contradict the main stories a little which was my biggest criticism. I think I would have liked most of these stories a lot more if I wasn’t constantly aware of the fact that they were jilting canon with every line. The timeline for Alex Rider is so tight, with only weeks between some of the books, how am I supposed to believe Alex got sent to Afghanistan in those weeks and it wasn’t mentioned in the original story? The timelines are just screwy.

Rating: 3.5 stars!

Alex in Afghanistan
It was a little weird to have a mission tucked in between Point Blanc and Skeleton Key that obviously hadn’t been mentioned in any of the original books, but I’m suspending my disbelief because I know that these were written afterwards and that the gap after PB when Brooklands was closed is the easiest place to fit another story in.

Altogether this was a pretty entertaining short story. It was compact but with all the hallmarks of an excellent Alex Rider novel, just cut a lot more tightly. The action sequences were still engaging, and after being elbow deep in Scorpia Rising and Never Say Die, it was nice to have a flashback to a happier and lighter-hearted Alex. This short story was well-balanced too, which is hard to do with a low word count, it wasn’t focused on just character or just action but had a nice blend of both. I liked the flash of depth this gave to the series, with more visceral proof of the way MI-6 has been using Alex from the start. In the first few books we got hints but no actual proof that MI-6 were more nefarious than they seemed, but here we’re shown that they never pull their punches. As a final note, I think I will literally have nightmares about the snake scene so thanks very much for that gory imagery.

The Man with Eleven Fingers
This was set after Stormbreaker, and I honestly found this whole thing hilarious. Alex was at his best, even with his toothache, and it was funny the whole way through. Like the previous story, it was a lighter kind of Alex story. There was a moment when Alex recognised someone, and for a full paragraph I thought it was a Yassen story. Alas, no Yassen here. The plot was interesting and mostly harmless (although reading it in the midst of COVID-19 chaos made it hit differently) and Meadows was genuinely hilarious. Give me more wacky Alex Rider one-shots, honestly.

High Tension
This was a weird one. Good, but weird. Alex is on holiday, though that’s obviously never going to work out, and there’s actually no bad guy for once. Instead, this was a really good show of Alex’s creativity and character. He’s brilliant, and I have to respect it. I don’t have the brain cells to react to things like he does, so I’m constantly impressed. All the Alex Rider plots are usually so complex and dangerous that I’m used to Alex being hit by malicious and nefarious plots. I’m surprised he didn’t assume there was something wrong beyond the norm, because I was totally waiting for Scorpia to parachute out of the sky with machine guns or something.

Secret Weapon/b>
Having Skoda back was a treat, because I wasn’t expecting it at first. I liked the idea of a cameo from a side-character from an earlier story, but this seemed a little too outlandish. The security seemed a little… lax, for Skoda to be able to kidnap a kid and steal a sword and generally cause chaos without any full-scale security response. Having MI-6 shadow Alex makes sense logically, though it doesn’t fit with the fact that every time anyone’s targeted Alex before they’ve gotten him in on it and used it as an excuse to drag him into a mission. I think more than anything including Tom in this story just made it baffling. Yes, absolutely he’s Alex’s best friend and therefore the best leverage but we’ve already read a story where Tom finds out Alex is a spy and has no inkling whatsoever about it. I’m just saying that if I got kidnapped at sword point by a man out for revenge against my best friend, only to be rescued by an MI-6 operative shadowing said best friend – I would have a lot of questions.

Tea with Smithers
Whyyyy did Smithers get ruined in Scorpia Rising? He’s so wild, and I would have loved this story a lot if it wasn’t for the fact that I know it’s all fat-phobic as hell. I do really enjoy the gadgets. I feel like the gadgets in every Alex Rider book are always a highlight because they’re so wacky and creative, and I love that ‘Tea with Smithers’ explored that further and gave Smithers a chance to really show all of his ridiculous gadgets and inventions by taking away the sense of danger and urgency and setting it on Smither’s own turf. It’s just a shame that I reflexively cringe every time I read his name.

Christmas at Gunpoint
This one was… not my favourite. The principle of it was really cool, and I liked seeing a snippet of Alex’s life before MI-6 got involved. It was also the first real time we’ve seen Ian Rider in any Alex Rider stories, and he’s more bad-ass than even I anticipated. But I physically cannot get over the idea that this would all happen and Alex wouldn’t question his uncle over it for a second? In Stormbreaker he was so surprised to find out Ian was a spy, which I thought was fair until I found out that apparently their holiday got interrupted by chaotic spy nonsense. Also, if Alex had literally saved the day like this, it would have been in Ian’s reports and MI-6 wouldn’t have been shocked to meet Alex Rider, teenage spy-to-be. It just felt a little like it didn’t work in the wider chronology. Next time maybe just a cool Ian story would be fun.

Spy Trap
There were some very cool moments in this. The truth serum stuff was creepy as hell, and Alex working it out and fighting back subtly was really interesting. Usually we just see Alex going loud so to see him taking it a little more stealthily here was fun. This story wasn’t hugely memorable, honestly, but it was a nice little read and made for an interesting adventure. Considering it came out during a bit of an Alex Rider drought, I think I would have loved to get my hands on it. I’m a little less thirsty for new content given that I’ve been marathon reading Alex Rider stories for weeks, so I was more critical of it.

I picked this up from a twitter rec because I needed a book with a food in the title for my #armedwithabingo card. I ended up reading it in a single sitting, and loving it.

The Apple-Tree Throne felt to me like a very gothic-historical-fantasy kind of novella. Lt. Benjamin Braddock survived the war, and more than that the massacre that ended the war. His friends went home to their families, their loved ones, but he has nothing. Nobody. He's got discharge papers and nowhere to go. And he's got the ghost of his commanding officer too, though he doesn't much want him. When the officer's family drag Benjamin into his life, his family, his house and even entangle him with his fiancee, how is Ben supposed to find his own place?

The Apple-Tree Throne is a quick read and really enjoyable. The world was a little different from ours, but parts of it were much the same. It felt like a parallel, and it was interesting to discover where it parted. And, considering that there was a lot of loss and grief in the story, and a huge focus on how hard it can be to find where you fit when you don't feel like you belong anywhere, the story was damn funny. I highlighted a dozen quotes when I was reading it because it gave me genuine moments of laughing out loud amongst the thoughtful moments.

This is definitely worth a pick up.

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”

Rating: 5 stars.

Despite the fact that Matilda was one of my favourite movies as a child, I'd never read the book. It was on my 100 books bucket list poster, and I knew it would be a quick, delightful read, and now I wish I'd read it as a child, because I would have related 100% with Matilda, with my parents struggling to keep me in books to feed my voracious reading appetite.

Even as an adult, Dahl's work is beautiful, a children's book that doesn't treat children like they're stupid, but explains things simply and succinctly. Admittedly, there's a sadness to reading Matilda as an adult, if you look too closely at neglectful parents, abusive behaviours (Trunchbull holding Miss. Honey's head under the water as a child, anyone?!) and a real weird moment of realisation that Miss. Honey is my age. Mostly, though, this is a beautiful tale about standing up to bullies, and well worth a couple hours reading after work.

The weirdest thing about this for me, was reading it a week after reading Carrie by Stephen King... not a kid's book in the slightest, but a veeery similar concept. Except Matilda uses her newfound powers to try and help someone who's kind to her, instead of punishing people who are cruel (though she does a little of that too). It was strange halfway through to realise that without Miss. Honey's kindness, Matilda could have totally turned out to be a Carrie-esque horror. Weird.

"...what he actually said was, 'Wonderful, rhinoceros. It is seriously the ants who are coming.'

Which made the boys fall back and wonder if perhaps this was Iron Man's stupid cousin who was attacking them."

Rating: 5 stars.

I am unironically giving this book 5 stars, because this is a goddamn quality read. I loved the Artemis Fowl books, and I was actually looking at those in the library when I found this and I nearly didn't pick it up. Given that I blazed through this in an hour and twenty minutes of sheer joy, I'm glad that I did. Tony Stark ( <3 ) is one of my all time favourite characters, so an Eoin Colfer Iron Man story was a must-read for me, though I was a little leery because another of my favourite authors wrote a Wonder Woman story that I just couldn't get into. But I loved this book.

Packed with witty one-liners and the perfect amount of Tony sass, I want a copy of this book to keep forever. Eoin Colfer nailed Tony's character, and the plot was engaging but not over-the-top, which let the characters really shine. ProtoTony (P-Tone) was an absolute moron, and I loved him, and I don't think there was a single character in this that wasn't brilliantly portrayed.

If Eoin Colfer could hop onto AO3 and start writing Tony Stark fanfic for me, I'd really appreciate it, because this book gave me life.