Warning: do not read this until you have watched or listened to the Doctor Who episode ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’. Spoilers ahead!

It’s hard for me to separate my feelings for this episode from the frustration of the poor audio and audio description. For a show that purports to be inclusive, it excludes a whole lot of people who have to rely solely on the audio.

There are lots of reasons why people can only listen to a TV show but not watch it; for some it’s their eyesight, for me it’s my neck (see here), for others it will be something different. Throughout the episode, I had trouble distinguishing the words of at least four characters at certain moments due to their poor diction and enunciation. However, what was meant to be the episode’s dramatic culmination was, to anyone solely listening to the audio, a confusing jumble of many people speaking over each other, lots of people speaking all at once, or switching very quickly from person to person, too fast for the audio description to describe which one was speaking. It was upsetting, especially when I’d been looking forward to this episode so much.

On the positive side, it was a dynamic and exciting episode, clearly building to something. I love it when Kate Stewart features in Doctor Who and one of her exchanges with the Doctor was my favourite moment of the episode, for its humour:

Doctor: Kate, do you have a time window?

Kate: You expressly told us in the 1970s, UNIT was absolutely forbidden to experiment with any form of time technology.

Doctor: Do you have a time window?

Kate: Ten floors down

Once I had listened to the audio again to work out what was happening at the end, with the revelation of the identity of ‘the one who waits’, I was still left with an overwhelming feeling of confusion. Sutekh??! Who??? I was also unsure which of the two creatures that materialised was actually this ‘Sutekh’, god of death: the big weird jackal beast or the corpse person that Susan Triad morphed into? Both? The audio didn’t make it clear if the giant jackal was speaking itself or if it was only speaking through Susan.

Was Susan Triad a normal human being who was chosen randomly by Sutekh to use as his vessel? Was there something special about her? What was the purpose of her repeatedly popping up in every episode? What technology was Susan going to give to the world for free? What does Sutekh have against the Doctor? Also, who is Mrs Flood? I’m guessing that we might get some answers next week in the finale.

I didn’t grow up with Doctor Who on the television. Doctor Who was off air from when I was 3-18 years old so I was completely unaware of it and unfamiliar with it until it returned in 2005, a month or so before my 19th birthday. I’ve seen (or, for the last four and a half years, listened to the audio of) every single episode since then. I’ve never gone back to watch Classic Who though, mainly because the very first episodes aren’t available and I’d want to start from the very beginning. So, although I’ve been a Whovian for 19 years, I don’t have the knowledge from the Classic series.

At the end of this episode, when the reveal of the Big Bad was someone of whom I’d never heard, I was left disappointed. I enjoy figuring out theories from clues dropped throughout the series but this is something that I could never have guessed because I didn’t have that knowledge from Classic Who in the first place. Yet, the show acts like the audience should know all this information. The closest I came was thinking that the Big Bad would be The Trickster, with whom I was familiar because of the Sarah Jane Adventures.

I’ve heard of the Egyptian god Seth (mainly because of Stargate SG-1 from way back when!), of whom I’m guessing that Sutekh, god of death, is a version. Given that Ruby might have been abandoned as a baby by Sutekh at the church, my previous theory that Ruby may well be related (the daughter?) to this sort of otherworldly being, might end up being correct! I’m trying to reach back to my Stargate knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians, but wasn’t Anubis the child of Seth in some versions of the story? Is Ruby a version of Anubis, if they’re following Egyptian mythology? Was this hinted at in ‘73 yards’ – protector of the dead?

Alternatively, although we’ve been led to believe that this Susan was not in fact the Doctor’s granddaughter, if she still is somehow, maybe she’s Ruby’s mother, making Ruby the Doctor’s great-granddaughter! That would make sense of why Susan kept popping up in The Doctor and Ruby’s timeline – she’s drawn to Ruby, even if Susan is in Time Lord hiding mode with a Chameleon Arch and has forgotten who she is.

I enjoyed that Ruby’s (adoptive) mum was more involved in this episode (and I know that someone who reads and comments on this blog will be very pleased about that!), though I’d like to see more of her.

In the end, unfortunately I’m still left with the overriding feeling of bewilderment and anticlimax. Plus exasperation at the audio description. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to the finale.

What did you think of the episode? Was it a much more enjoyable episode to watch visually, without the confusion and frustration of the audio description? Let me know your opinions and thoughts in the comments! (No spoilers for next week’s finale though, please)

<p>The post My thoughts on ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’ – episode 7 of Doctor Who first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

Warning: do not read this until you have watched/listened to the Doctor Who episode ’Rogue’. Spoilers ahead!

This episode is incredibly fun! I think that it might be my favourite episode of this new series so far. It has the humour and the quick repartee back and forth that we’ve been missing up until now. I didn’t realise how much I’d been missing the fast dialogue, the witty replies. Multiple times it leaves you with a big grin across your face so I don’t care that this episode might be considered a bit silly or cheesy. It just feels, in essence, so very Who.

When the Doctor says at the beginning “just try not to get engaged or accidentally invent tarmac. 1902 got away from me”, we know that we are in for a great script and that maybe one of those things mentioned or something similar is going to happen! If you’ve been reading my previous posts about this series of Doctor Who, there has been a theme of little things that the Doctor and Ruby say or do that cause ripples, small changes throughout history. In this episode, you think at first that it’s Ruby who is going to be the culprit by introducing the word ‘OK’ in 1813 (the year in which this episode is set) but it turns out that the person to whom she is speaking is one of the shapeshifting ‘Chuldur’ creatures, who gets sent to another dimension at the end of the episode, so no butterfly effect there. And it turns out that it’s the Doctor who sort of gets proposed to, not Ruby!

I find it interesting that at the end of the episode when the Doctor is in pain, this new “healed” bi-generated 15th Doctor (I speculated here whether he would revert to old habits), starts to veer towards what he’s always done: never stopping, never looking back, never dealing with the pain. But it then goes a different way as Ruby pulls him back and we see the effects of the bi-generation, of him being able to stop, with a little help. This is seen when the Doctor is trying to breeze past the pain of what has just happened, saying “anyway, it is what it is, so, onwards, fine, next. Off we go! Where shall we go? Anywhere!”
However, Ruby recognises this for what it is and doesn’t let it go, saying “Doctor, you don’t have to be like this”.
The Doctor replies “I have to be like this because this is what I’m like. Onwards, upwards, new horizons, moving on, it’s fine.”
It’s very clearly not fine though and Ruby lets him properly feel the pain. So we see that the Doctor doesn’t have to be like that anymore; he doesn’t have to always be running, never stopping, never processing. It was good to finally see an effect of the bi-generation and the changes it has made to the Doctor, in a good way. This is the first episode where I’ve started to like Ruby a little. I love it when the Doctor’s companions are able to pull him back from his worst instincts.

There is another incident that I noticed in passing that may or may not be significant. One of the Chuldur says that Ruby has the scent of a Chuldur, which is why the creatures don’t notice that she isn’t one of them. They pass this off with the explanation that it is a false scent because of the psychic earrings that Ruby is wearing. This may be all there is to it but I’m wondering if there is something more here. Could Ruby be a shapeshifter somehow, without knowing it? Or is it just alluding to the fact that she might be another sort of being? We still know so little about Ruby. We don’t even know what job she has. But I like what I see of her this episode, supporting other women (it’s not her fault that the person that she’s helping turns out to be a Chuldur!). I also like what we see of the Doctor this episode — his playfulness, yes, (the Kylie Minogue music scene anyone?!) — but also that he refuses to lose his friend to save the world.

I hope that we get to see more of Rogue again in the future (loved Jonathan Groff as King George III in the musical ‘Hamilton’ and he’s great here too). I wonder if the new boss that Rogue mentions (in his work as a bounty hunter), the one who makes him do all the correct paperwork, will turn out to be someone significant in orchestrating events.

I know that I’ve been going on about the random singing in each episode but I actually liked it this time (the Doctor sings a bit of ‘Pure Imagination’ from ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ when he’s introducing Rogue to the Tardis). The singing seems more natural and apt in the moment.

Enjoyed this episode. Great fun!

What did you think of this episode? Agree/disagree with me? Let me know in the comments! I love to hear from you.

<p>The post My thoughts on ‘Rogue’ – episode 6 of Doctor Who first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

Warning: do not read this blog post until you have watched/listened to the episode ‘Dot and Bubble’. Spoilers ahead!

At first, this episode is very ‘Black Mirror’-esque with a similar feeling to the start of the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’.

‘Dot and Bubble’ appears to be a commentary on social media, on shallow and superficial influencers with no substance (the way Lindy talks is very familiar to us; she has the same inflections, way of speaking and content as influencers in real life). The ‘dot and bubble’ technology encloses the user’s head in a bubble full of little screens, each of which is a direct video connection to one of their “friends”. This fills their entire vision so they can’t see where to walk; they have arrows onscreen telling them which way to go. They are completely reliant on the ‘dot and bubble’ technology. It tells them when they need to go to toilet, when to stand up or go to sleep etc. It erodes their ability to think for themselves. They see nothing of reality, nothing of the truth all around them, nothing beyond their bubble, beyond their echo chamber; they cannot see the monsters that are literally eating them alive. Anything boring or uncomfortable can be swiped away or blocked from their life.

If you’ve seen Black Mirror, ‘Dot and Bubble’ doesn’t feel like anything original or new. I felt like I’d seen it all before but I didn’t mind because I love the genre.

However, this is where the audio description really let me down. With the audio description, all that you could tell was that a lot of privileged, rich young people had gone to a planet called Finetime, ‘where everything is fine all of the time’ (which has echoes of the ‘Everything is Awesome’ propaganda from The Lego Movie!), financially supported by their parents on their homeworld; the young people (solely 17-27 year olds are allowed in this domed bubble city) only have to work two hours a day and the rest of the time is for partying.

The audio description never mentions the race of any of the characters but then audio description rarely does. You just assume that there’s a fairly diverse cast, unless the audio description mentions anything specific. The accents were eclectic so it was reasonable to think that there were a range of ethnicities and geographical identities involved. So, given that I thought that the characters were diverse (there was no possible way to know through the audio description that every single person was white), the phrases that one might have usually recognised as racist microaggressions went over my head as meaning something else because I didn’t know that all the characters were white. So even at the end, it wasn’t completely clear from the audio description that they were discriminating against the Doctor on the grounds of race. It came across on the audio description as them not liking the Doctor because he wasn’t in the same clique, not on their ‘friends list’, not rich enough, not elite. It didn’t make any sense why the survivors refused to be saved by the Doctor. The audio description really should have been better.

However, I did start to realise that I had missed something when one of the men said at the end “we can go out there to this planet and we can fight it and tame it and own it, be pioneers just like our ancestors”. This set off alarm bells, especially the word ‘own’. There was mention of a ‘Great Abrogation’ but I didn’t know what the word ‘abrogation’ meant. But then it became very obvious from what three of the survivors said to the Doctor next that I had definitely missed that there was something more going on here.

After the episode, I had to go online to find out that the domed bubble city’s inhabitants had all been white, living in a segregated colony that had security settings (both physically and digitally) to keep out POC. There had been no way to tell via the audio description. This then made a lot of comments throughout the episode start coming to mind to see them for what they were and recognising them as microaggressions and white supremacy, and then at the end it became overt discrimination and devastating racism. This was one of the bleakest endings of Doctor Who. The characters refused to be saved by the Doctor. They chose to potentially die rather than be saved by him. There was no redemption.

I liked that the Doctor, even in the face of their abhorrence towards him, still tried his hardest to persuade them to let him save them. It shows us what sort of man this Doctor is; he even wants to save those who don’t deserve it.

This episode made me feel stupid because I very nearly missed the point of the whole episode. However, it seemed like you would need several university degrees to unpick all the layers and meanings. I don’t know if this was because of the audio description being bad or if I was being dense or because the writing was deliberately obfuscating and trying to catch you out. It felt rather scrambled, confusing and addressed lots of issues all at once. But the audio description definitely needs to improve! Anybody listening, as opposed to watching, was definitely at a disadvantage and kept in the dark.

I wonder at what point a viewer who was watching the episode visually would have noticed that everyone was white. I imagine that if you didn’t notice until the end, you would have to ask yourself the question ’why didn’t I notice?’, which is what the writers were trying to get the viewers to reflect upon. I’m not sure that getting the audience to feel shame that they didn’t notice is the best or most effective tool to address racism. It can make people get defensive as opposed to engaging in some self-reflection. The episode pulls no punches though and we all need to be challenged on our potential prejudices and blind spots.

Overall, I did enjoy the episode but it is not an easy watch/listen.

What did you think of the episode? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

<p>The post My thoughts on ‘Dot and Bubble’ – episode 5 of Doctor Who first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

I wonder if the writers of the TV crime show ‘Castle’ have a bone to pick with ‘Boom’ (the latest episode of Doctor Who)?! In season 5 of ‘Castle’ there is an episode called ‘Still’, where Beckett steps onto a pressure sensitive bomb and has to stay still for the whole episode. In ‘Boom’, the Doctor steps on a pressure sensitive landmine and has to stay still for the whole episode. Déjà vu!

There isn’t a lot going on plot-wise in ‘Boom’ but there are encouraging signs of potential and we start to see properly who this Doctor is and get to know him a bit. This is definitely a character centred, getting-to-know-the-new-Doctor episode. I loved that the Doctor does some quick complex maths in his head; this is what I’d been waiting for. I’m glad that the Doctor’s clever, fast mind is being allowed its moments; more please! I’m still not sold on Ruby though (see my blog post on my initial thoughts of the new series and characters for my reasons on this). I just can’t get any sort of a hold on who she is as a person. It didn’t help that she spent a lot of the episode unconscious!

The writer of this episode, Steven Moffat, seemed to pour out all his feelings about the senselessness of war, about the waste of each precious life in this episode. He slammed home how each person who dies, each one of whom is loved and is someone else’s whole universe, becomes an anonymous statistic to an indifferent world. Moffat also hits home about the people who profit from war and the arms industry, those who benefit from keeping the war machine going. He also has things to say about the medical system and how it costs less to let the ill/injured die rather than to heal them or pay for the care of the disabled. I didn’t mind Moffat having his say as it’s obviously topical, but I’ve never known Moffat to be quite so preachy before. In a couple of the Doctor’s speeches, it sometimes felt like we were definitely getting Moffat’s view of the world, rather than the Doctor’s, especially when it got judgemental, acerbic and simplistic about faith. I don’t want to be brought out of full immersion in a story by a writer shoving himself into the limelight. If done well, a viewer shouldn’t once think of a writer during a TV show. It’s certainly impassioned and heartfelt though.

As a side note: what’s with the singing in every single episode? Is it just that they wanted to use the two actors’ talents in this area or is it building towards something? Is it significant? Or completely insignificant? I still maintain that it would have been better (and fun!) to have made one full musical episode of Doctor Who, rather than sprinkling one song per episode, as seems to be happening. I’m hoping there’s a plot-related reason for this (to do with The Maestro?) and not just because Ncuti Gatwa has a nice singing voice!

I also feel like there are little seeds being planted here and there (having started with the ‘mavity’ instead of ‘gravity’ change) that might all be pointing to something big to come.

I don’t know if the 15th Doctor’s ‘fish fingers and custard’ comment, linking him to the 11th Doctor, will turn out to be of note. They do both have a certain playfulness to their nature that makes them a little similar.

I think maybe that this episode lacked the emotional clout that it would have had if we had known these characters more and for longer; I don’t think we care enough about what happens to them yet so it lacks the jeopardy that it should have had.

Unfortunately the “twist” falls apart if you think about it for even a few seconds. The twist is that there is no enemy in this war zone. The “ambulances”, with their algorithm to keep the war ongoing, only kill injured people. To have that many injured people, there would have to be someone injuring the soldiers. Even if they thought that the enemy entities were the fog itself or the mud, if they were shooting at the mud or fog, nobody would be shooting back to hurt them. The soldiers would be organised so ‘friendly fire’ would cause a nominal amount of injuries. Who has been bombing them, causing craters, explosions and fires that make up the landscape? It doesn’t make sense.

Faith comes under heavy fire in this episode. Humans will use any excuse for war though, regardless of the existence of faith. Ironically, the fact that it was a father’s love that saved the day and the assertion that what survives of us is love, is actually very Christian.

What did you think of the episode? I’d love to know and am eager for some interaction with other humans! Feel free to leave a comment below. No spoilers for future episodes please!

<p>The post Quick thoughts on ‘Boom’ – episode 3 of Doctor Who first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

Here are all the books to which I listened in 2023 (click on the image and zoom in to see all the books):

Have you read any of these books? I’d love to hear your thoughts about them in the comments. What were the best and worst books that you read this year? Let me know.

I haven’t been able to do my usual individual reviews of each audiobook this year, due to my deteriorating condition, but the following should give a broad overview of my year in books.

NB I’m only able to listen to audiobooks; I’m unable to read physical books or ebooks because of my neck.

What was my favourite fiction book of the year?

‘The Will of the Many’ by James Islington. It was very satisfying and, from a pure enjoyment/entertainment standpoint, it was brilliant. At first when I read the synopsis, I thought that maybe it was just going to be a rip off of ‘Red Rising’ but I actually enjoyed it more than the first book of ‘Red Rising’ (though, for me, ‘Red Rising’ only properly blossoms in the second and third books).

In so many books we’re told that a character is clever but then that person does lots of annoying things or makes stupid mistakes that prove otherwise, whereas in ‘The Will of the Many’ the character genuinely felt clever and cunning. His gradual improvements and advancement in the rankings, the tactics of the maze, his friends etc. – I just loved everything about it.

I thought that I roughly knew where the book was heading but then…
…no spoilers from me (well, maybe a teeny tiny clue)… let’s just say that I thought that the audiobook had glitched at the end there. I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series and I hope that the author is able to keep this level of momentum and knows how to steer the story to progress satisfyingly instead of fizzling out, which sometimes happens in multi-book series.

Best book I’ve read in ages.

Any honourable mentions in fiction?

I finally took another run at ‘The Kingkiller Chronicle’ books by Patrick Rothfuss. This is a highly regarded fantasy series but I first tried them a long time ago when I was only beginning to listen to audiobooks and hadn’t acquired the patience needed for audiobooks yet so I didn’t get very far. I’m very glad that I have given them another chance all these years later because this time around, I loved them. However, I had thought this was a duology. Alas! It turns out that it’s an unfinished series with no sign that the author is going to finish the next book any time soon. I want the next book!

What was my least favourite book of the year?

‘The Dog of the North’ by Elizabeth McKenzie. My foray into literary fiction (this book was on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction) did not go well. It felt directionless and nothing was resolved in the end. I do realise what the author was trying to achieve with this but I just thought that it was terrible. Although not a personal fan of unresolved endings and unanswered questions, some authors can just about keep me on board when they do it, but not this one. I hated it. It was both pointless and not enjoyable.

What were my favourite non-fiction audiobooks?

Usually, it’s fiction that’s the highlight for me but this year there were five standout non-fiction books, which I highly recommend to everyone:

• ‘A house in the sky’ by Amanda Lindhout. Amanda tells about her kidnapping in Somalia and time as a hostage. It is well written and fascinating. This seems a strange thing to say but I really love reading memoirs of hostages (my favourite is ‘Taken on Trust’ by Terry Waite) because, due to my unusual and extreme situation, I can often strongly identify with their stories and I experience some of the same things. It makes one feel less alone. When Amanda went through terrible things, she went to ‘a house in the sky’ in her mind. The human mind is amazing and reacts in ways to help you survive horrific situations. I go to a castle/palace in a city and kingdom that I call Camelot; I’ve lived hundreds of different lives there.

• ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel. This is such an important and compelling book. Although it’s technically a novel, ‘Night’ is also an autobiographical account of the author’s own experiences in Nazi Germany’s death camps.

• ‘Hiroshima’ by John Hersey. This book tells the stories of six survivors of Hiroshima. It recounts their day on 6th August 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city: it follows what they were doing before, during and after. One has to keep reminding oneself that this isn’t fiction because as one experiences that day along with them, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like fiction because it’s so outside of the realm of human experience. This is another important book, especially in the year that ‘Oppenheimer’ was released, a film in which no experience of any Japanese person was included.

• ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Essential for anyone wanting to understand trauma.

• ‘The Silk Roads: A New History of the World’ by Peter Frankopan. Highly recommended and eye-opening.

Any additional comments on the year’s reading (listening)?

As you can see from the image of all the books I read this year, there is a large chunk of James Patterson books and a few Harlan Coben books that I’ve listened to this year, but it was mainly due to the fact that I didn’t want to have to constantly trawl through Audible to find books that I might like (I’m picky). I found a decent enough series (the ‘Alex Cross’ books) that I could just binge my way through, which didn’t require much brain power and didn’t require work to find the next book to read. They weren’t the best but they were good enough to keep my interest and keep me entertained. I did get sick of them eventually and stopped listening to the series. I did enjoy Richard Osman’s ‘Thursday Murder Club’ series more than the James Patterson and Harlan Coben books, but I still haven’t found any crime books that are as good as the crime TV series that I used to be able to watch. Still searching.

As you can also see from the image, I re-listened to many books that I love, some in preparation for the release of the next book in a series.

What’s next up on my reading list?

For Christmas I was given the following audiobooks so I’m looking forward to them:

• ‘Defiant’ by Brandon Sanderson
• ‘SkyWake: Endgame’ by Jamie Russell
• ‘Making it so’ by Patrick Stewart
• ‘Tom Stoppard: A BBC Radio Collection of 14 full-cast dramas’
• ‘The Memory Thieves’ by Dhonielle Clayton

___________________________

Links to my previous Audiobook Adventures:

My Audiobook Adventures #1
My Audiobook Adventures #2
My favourite books (this is essentially My Audiobook Adventures #2.5!)
My Audiobook Adventures #3
My Audiobook Adventures #4
My Audiobook Adventures #5

<p>The post My Audiobook Adventures in 2023 – Audible Stats Day first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

Usually I blog my audiobook adventures approximately once every three months but in October last year, my Dad suddenly died. My thoughts were completely full of Dad and only Dad; my brain was in a shocked and traumatised paralysis. I wasn’t able to listen to any audiobooks again until mid-December when I comfort-listened to all the Harry Potter books. I enjoyed them even more than usual, though the deaths in those books have a whole new impact when you’ve lost someone you love. Towards the end of December, I was able to start listening to new books again.

Due to increasing neck damage from not getting the neurosurgery that I desperately need, the things that I have to do medically to stay alive take longer. As a result, my “day” has turned into a 48-hour period of time instead of a 24-hour one. This leaves me constantly in a state of extreme sleep deprivation, which greatly alters my cognition and thus my ability to write reviews. It has taken me months to write this blog post, tiny bit by tiny bit. It’s an act of defiance, saying I’m a human being and I’m here. I have thoughts and opinions. I exist.

These reviews have come to mean a lot to me. I know that nobody else cares much about my reviews but I don’t mind; I do them for myself because I enjoy writing them so much, even though I don’t have the cognitive capacity for them often.

It’s going to be difficult to press the ‘publish’ button on this blog post because it will be my first batch of reviews without my Dad here to read them. I loved getting his thoughts and reactions to what I wrote.

I continue to decline and we’ve been desperately trying (and failing) to think of another fundraising idea for my life-saving surgery (GoFundMe.com/savejenny ). Mum and I are working hard to stay afloat and keep me alive but that takes up more time than we have as it is. Really we need some people to help with fundraising, now that Dad is gone and Mum is having to effectively do two people’s jobs.

I hope that you enjoy the reviews below. Let me know your thoughts about them in the comments. Leave a comment telling me what books you have been reading/listening to lately; I’d love to hear about them. I always love getting more book recommendations too, as long as they’re available on Audible.
If you’ve read any of the books that I review below, do you agree with my assessment of them or do you have a different opinion?

NB I’m only able to listen to audiobooks; I’m unable to read physical books or ebooks because of my neck.

REVIEWS:

‘Spectacles’ by Sue Perkins

 
Before this, my experience of Sue Perkins was from her stellar performances on ‘Just A Minute’, her travel documentaries (the Mekong River, the Ganges and Japan), as well as ‘Thronecast’ (the live aftershow discussion of each episode of Game of Thrones as it aired), so I was curious to find out more about her in this memoir. The book was indeed sufficiently diverting and interesting but it didn’t go all that deep or feel like she was properly opening up to lay her soul bare, which is fair enough. As a reader, we were also jumped around in time quite a bit; I would have preferred a more linear approach instead of going haphazardly back and forth in time. It was chatty and an easy listen though (and it’s impossible not to like Sue Perkins, isn’t it), which is sometimes just what one needs.

‘Midnighters’ by Hana Tooke

 
This is a charming and quirky story set in an alternative Prague in the late nineteenth century. Ema is the youngest of twelve children. Her parents and older siblings are academics and scientists from a young age and she is expected to follow in their footsteps and find her own field of study, her passion. She starts off as a curious child, full of questions, but gradually this spirit gets eroded over time and her questions are discouraged and silenced. When she starts noticing peculiar things about herself, this ‘Ema Enigma’ is the mystery to which she wants to devote her studies and scientific rigour. However, all these peculiarities are dismissed by everyone else and she is effectively gaslighted. Ema retreats into herself, scared of most things, especially herself, and desperately tries to do whatever she thinks will bring her parents’ approval and respect. In her futile endeavours to try to please them, she ends up feeling like a disappointment and failure by her twelfth birthday.

Being the last child left at home, Ema has to go and stay with her estranged uncle when her parents leave on an expedition. Here she meets Silvie, a mysterious girl, who, bit by bit, rekindles Ema’s curiosity and nudges her to overcome her fears and lack of self-belief. In the end, this is what builds her up and gives her enough confidence when, in order to potentially solve a murder, she faces what she thinks might be a choice between either the approval of her parents *or* accepting who she is, being herself and using her unique abilities to determine the murderer (but potentially earning the disappointment and disapproval of her parents if she fails). An unusual and well-paced story with a great message and a murder mystery included to boot.

‘The Sword of Kaigen: a Theonite War Story’ by M.L. Wang

 
This is a heartbreaking, unique fantasy story set in ‘the sword of Kaigen’, which is the name of a peninsula in the Kaigen Empire. The world is Japan-inspired, with elemental magic. The audiobook can be a bit disorienting at first because each person’s name seems to change to have different endings depending on the familiarity of the relationship between the people who are addressing each other. Also, there are some words that I have no idea if they are a made-up language for the book or if they are Japanese. I was hoping that there might be a glossary at the end of the audiobook but there wasn’t; you could deduce their meaning from the context for the most part though.

At the heart of the story is a mother and son, Misaki and Mamoru. Although the rest of the empire has developed to a modern level, the sword of Kaigen peninsula is mostly cut off from that and still has a traditional, old-fashioned warrior society, which is deeply sexist, oppressive and patriarchal. Mamoru’s world is changed when a northerner comes to his school and challenges his whole world view and what he has been led to believe to be true. He learns of the propaganda that his people have been fed and is shaken to the core.

Mamoru gets to know his mother more as a result. She went to school outside of Kaigen so hasn’t grown up with such a cloistered, blind view of the world. She already knew the truths that Mamoru is only just realising. Although her spirit has been beaten down over the years by her abusive father-in-law, oppression and relentless sexism, she finds the courage to speak a little to Mamoru, in a society where it is not considered her place to speak to him, in a society where her children are considered to belong to her husband but not to her. She is able to secretly teach him a little with the fighting skills that she learnt at school abroad, even though women are not allowed to fight in Kaigen.

But then disaster strikes. I don’t want to give away any spoilers because it’s an amazing story. It’s also very unusual in structure. In the middle of the book, one finds oneself at a climax that would usually come at the end of a book. You will probably cry! The rest is the devastating aftermath of the event.

I thought that this was the start of a series because the world is so rich and deep. I thought it was going to be a series about the people gradually banding together and rising up against the ruling power of the Emperor. Plus a new storyline and mystery is introduced towards the end of the book of an enigmatic new enemy, kidnapping children, to build an army with a mix of different types of magic. So I was utterly stunned to find out, after finishing the book, that this is a standalone. The author leaves lots of questions unanswered and the baffling new mystery that is introduced at the end.

The villagers decide to stay alive and survive rather than rise up and potentially run the risk of being gradually killed off by assassins of the empire. They just want to live their lives. I wanted them to rise up and overcome! They thought it was pointless and would result in more death. But they had all the strong families with secret bloodline techniques and could have banded together with others like them; they have the most powerful warriors and magic. They could have created a better world.

Some people will find the ending realistic but I was hoping for it to be only the beginning of an incredible new series. It’s still meaningful and thoughtful but I wanted more!

I hated the redemptive arc of the loathsome husband. His attitude, behaviour and sexism are barely changed by the end yet the author wants us to believe that he is now a noble character. It feels like the author is forcing it and justifying things that can’t be justified. The double standards are galling when the author not only holds Misaki just as responsible for the problems in the marriage as her husband, but also she has to perform all the emotional (and physical) labour to redeem her husband, wake him up from his coldness and indifference and bring about the change in him. It’s forced down our throats that it’s her duty as a wife to do so. Yes, both husband and wife have been mistreated by the same person, but Misaki has also been subjugated by her husband’s demand for her obedience and the systemic sexism that exists in the culture. The two can’t be compared. She was forced to give up her whole life to this arranged marriage; if she had married the man that she loved instead, she would have been shunned and never seen her family (whom she loved dearly) ever again.

It also feels odd that Misaki, who has clearly been shown to be a skilled teacher and fighter, is not allowed to play this role but her husband, who is a terrible teacher and communicator, ends up the one teaching. Much as the author wants to push the idea that this marriage has ended up a team effort, the inequality is still obvious; Misaki would have been much happier with Robin and they would have been far better suited.

‘SkyWake: Battlefield’ by Jamie Russell

 
This is the sequel to the brilliantly fun ‘SkyWake: Invasion’, to which I relistened before embarking on the follow-up. It introduces us to Casey, a 15-year-old girl who loves video games, especially ‘SkyWake’, which is the new phenomenon sweeping the gaming world in this story. Teenagers across the world gather in various cities for a gaming tournament of SkyWake. The only problem is that Casey has been pretending to be a boy to her online friends in her SkyWake team so that she doesn’t experience the sexism and offensive comments that are so common over the headset chatter in the online gaming world. That’s the set up and I highly recommend you read/listen to it before reading this review any further, in order to prevent any spoilers. It’s a story of first contact (sort of) with aliens and the real purpose and “people” behind the SkyWake game. It would be a great book for reluctant readers or as a starting point to introduce a young person to science fiction. There isn’t a single moment where it’s possible to be bored; it’s fast-paced and fun.

Jamie Russell is the king of the cliffhanger and although both books have satisfying, contained stories of their own, each one ends with the kind of massive cliffhanger that leaves one doing an uncannily accurate impression of Veruca Salt in our desire to have the next book in the series, singing*: “DON’T CARE HOW, I WANT IT NOW!”
*(in the film ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ (1971))

In ‘SkyWake: Battlefield’, Casey has to learn to trust herself when everyone else thinks she’s going crazy (with insidious comments from the awful Xander (oh I hate hate hate that manipulative boy) getting into the heads of Casey’s team and little brother to make them think that she’s losing the plot.

In the end, Casey has to make a decision when there are no good options, when she has to choose the least worst option. Something that I’ve become very familiar with over the years. When there are no choices that are acceptable, what does one do? That’s the question that this book asks.

A hugely enjoyable, action-packed, fast and fun adventure.

‘The Books of Babel’ series (‘Senlin Ascends’, ‘Arm of the Sphinx’, ‘The Hod King’ and ‘The Fall of Babel’) by Josiah Bancroft

 
This has rocketed into my top 10 favourite series. I was going to give it a rave review…until the ending. So, almost a rave review. The ending wasn’t terrible by any stretch but it wasn’t great either. Considering how much I’d enjoyed the series, it felt lazy and a bit of a cop out not to give us all the answers that we wanted. Some people might like this more open style of ending but I prefer the author to have figured out and plotted meticulously so that we’re given a more satisfying end. Again, it wasn’t a bad ending, I was just hoping that we’d finally find out everything.

The first book was the weakest of the series but still good, however the story really deepened and blossomed in the next two books. I gradually got used to the rhythm of the pacing and appreciated it increasingly more as it went along. There were periods of what seemed like more slow, plodding story but actually those times were cleverly and intricately developing character and building different strands of plot, which then would all of a sudden come together in a thrilling and exciting period of action and activity. This pacing pattern happened repeatedly and one would find oneself getting more and more excited about what was to come as it built towards the next big occurrences.

I loved the family of characters that gathered together around Senlin (Iren was my favourite) and the series is a masterpiece. It’s a sort of steampunk dystopia, starting with a very ordinary and naive man coming to the mysterious Tower of Babel for his honeymoon, only to have to start on a journey, up through the ringdoms of the tower, to find his new wife (who has gone missing), discovering the shocking realities of the tower along the way.

It’s hard to say anymore without giving away spoilers (stop reading now if you don’t even want a small spoiler) but I thought the wrong two people ended up together and there should have been more of a change and revolution in the ways of the tower.

Still, these four books were outstanding and I would highly recommend them.

‘Amari and the Great Game’ by B.B. Alston

 
This is the sequel to ‘Amari and the Night Brothers’. I loved the parts relating to the time freeze and Amari (and her friends’) investigations into it to find who was responsible. The Supernatural Congress was vivid in my mind’s eye and I loved those scenes in that circular room with the stairs leading down to the sunken centre. I thought the final answer to the mystery of who caused the time freeze to be rather ingenious. That was cleverly done.

On the whole, I wasn’t quite so keen on ‘The Great Game’ parts of the story. I usually relish any sort of competition within a story so I was surprised that the challenges were some of my least favourite bits. They felt a damp squib and repetitious, with not enough substance to them. I wanted more of Amari having to figure things out, like in the second challenge when she had to figure out Alexander the Great’s clue, instead of Dylan just flinging fireballs at her and generally only popping up to be the designated villain. And Cosmo was infuriatingly annoying, which I guess was his part to play.

In the final challenge, an interesting philosophical point is raised, when for a moment Amari has a chance to pull out certain memories of Dylan’s from his head to make him “good” again, taking away all the bad things that had happened to him. The memories went back into him after all so we didn’t get to explore the topic, but I don’t think simply forgetting the memories and the choices that he made would have made him “good”. She would have essentially been taking away from him the person who he had chosen to be. He had chosen to go down a dark path and even though we may wish that people would choose differently, we can’t change their decisions and the consequences of what they have done. Lots of people have bad things happen to them; only a few choose to go down an evil path as a result.

I enjoyed the friendships and Lara’s redemptive arc within that. That was fun. The prejudice that magicians face within the Supernatural world continues to be a powerful allegory for racism. This book adds ‘Unwanteds’ to the mix, with a certain group of people being targeted and deported, which is particularly relevant and astute. The whole group are held responsible for any bad action of any single person within that group of people. Sound familiar?

I’ve noticed that so many fantasy stories, when the main character is female, often end with that main character losing her powers or abilities as a result of some great sacrifice for the greater good or to save someone else or to save the world. So I wasn’t pleased when this one ended the same way but I’m hoping that, since it’s only the second book in the series, Amari will get her magic back. I know that the point being made is that Amari is still just as special without her magic and that her power is not in her magic but within herself, but I do get disappointed and frustrated repeatedly in fantasy literature when a girl or woman’s power is taken away from her.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, though I didn’t feel it was as strong as the first one. However, it felt more of an ‘Empire Strikes Back’ middle of a trilogy, setting up what is to come. So I’m definitely looking forward to the next book, hopefully with the euphoric victory of ‘Return of the Jedi’ in the end.

‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’ by Matthew Perry

 
Matthew Perry holds nothing back in this book, which is certainly what one wants from an autobiography. It’s raw and honest, accurately depicting how addiction can ravage a life.

As a two month old baby, he wouldn’t stop crying so his parents took him to a doctor who prescribed a barbiturate that would always knock him out cold immediately. The effect of such a strong drug at that stage of a baby’s brain development would have been profound and it’s sobering to think what path his life could have taken, if this hadn’t happened. Did it lay the foundations of addiction?

I don’t know how to feel about this memoir because Matthew doesn’t hide all the worst parts of himself; I admire the honesty and him not giving up but in showing those awful parts, it makes it hard to warm to him at times (although I did feel an instant affinity with him when when he says that he’s never slept more than four hours straight in his life and I immediately liked him tonnes more because, well, I hate people who are able to sleep (😛)). However, he admits at the end that he’s spent most of his life only thinking of himself and never giving a thought to others; he’s been narcissistic and selfish. He treats women terribly. Repeatedly. The amount of money that he wastes and throws away is obscene and makes one feel sick. The thing is, he’s very self-aware and realises all this, yet this awareness rarely brings about any change.

Throughout his life he’s seldom been able to stay sober for long, whether it’s alcohol, pills or cigarettes. Even though he’s in a good place when he writes this book, the fact that he’s never stayed sober for long makes one worried about him, especially when he says he’s hasn’t got another detox in him. He says if he falls off the wagon, that’s it. His desire for alcohol and drugs has gone now though because he developed such a tolerance that they no longer have any sort of desired effect on him. It’s coming off cigarettes, of which doctors say if he doesn’t stay off he’ll die in his 60s, that seems to be the bigger problem.

He does mention ‘Friends’ a certain amount but I would have liked to hear more on this topic. It was fascinating how one of his best friends was offered the part of Chandler first but was also offered the main part on another show and he took that role instead. Everything so nearly went another way.

It’s taken him a long time in life to realise that he was chasing after all the wrong things. To realise that he is enough. To begin to believe that he deserves love. He now wants to spend the rest of his life helping others, which is a worthy ambition.

‘Stellarlune’ by Shannon Messenger

 
I love the ‘Keeper of the Lost Cities’ series; it’s unadulterated enjoyment. When you’re first introduced to the Lost Cities with their colourful crystal buildings and ridiculous clothes, you might begin to think that the books might not be for you or that they’ll be too silly but you’d be wrong. Soon the characters will feel like family, the exciting plots will transport you away and you’ll just be having fun.

‘Stellarlune’ is the ninth book in the series. This is the first time in the series where the plot is a bit too meandering and loses its way. It feels a bit bogged down, with several scenes going on for far too long; it needed more editing.

There’s still plenty to enjoy here, with Sophie coming into her own (finally!) and showing the beginnings of leadership, though still often too impatient and impulsive. It’s also gratifying to watch the clues be deciphered. Plus, we get a sweet scene for which I’m sure many readers have been waiting for ages; it was a long time coming. The author was ostensibly holding off on it as long as possible because the two characters in question are obviously endgame material and should be together so it couldn’t have happened too early on in the books. It had reached an absurd level of delay though so I’m glad it finally happened.

‘A Heart That Works’ by Rob Delaney

 
Since Dad died, I’ve been seeking out memoirs dealing with grief, to find people who “get it”. You think that nobody could possibly understand your own level of pain and love but you seek out others’ stories anyway to see how they got through their own personal End of The World. Although everyone will experience grief differently, there will be plenty of similarities and commonalities too, which it’s comforting to hear as you recognise them (and there were indeed plenty in this book).

‘A Heart That Works’ is about the life and death of Rob Delaney’s young son. He writes to communicate and because he wants people to understand, even though he realises most people won’t, not completely. There will be particulars of each person’s grief that no others can understand but Rob Delaney makes a raw, eloquent and unflinching stab at trying to connect and bring others into a sliver of what it’s like. It’s something that words will always fall short of being able to describe but this is a powerful and honest book.

The only thing with which I had a problem was that Rob thinks it’s harder and worse when your child dies than when anyone else you love dies. I’m sure most parents would agree with him. They probably think that I don’t understand because I don’t have a child of my own. I don’t want to get into a Suffering Olympics because that’s something that nobody wants to win. But people who don’t have children can love as hard and as strongly and it can be just as devastating to have anyone you love to that extent die, no matter their age. Don’t minimise it.

‘Bloodmarked’ by Tracey Deonn

 
It was always going to be difficult to create a sequel to rival the revelation of the twists at the end of ‘Legendborn’, the first book in this series, and the euphoric moments in the cave when everything came together. This series is a modern retelling of Arthurian legend in an imaginative and unusual way.

The powers that Bree discovers to be hers in the last book, one might expect to be empowering and freeing but Bree finds herself more trapped, powerless, deceived and violated than ever throughout this book, with forces from both without and within fighting for control of her. Tracey Deonn brings us as readers into this build up of injustices, of choice being taken away, of being stifled and silenced until we are boiling with frustration and rage along with Bree. Although Bree’s actions may sometimes be petulant or immature (she’s only 16 though so that’s understandable), she’s dealing with an awful lot!

There weren’t staggering revelations or surprises in this book but it was still immensely enjoyable, though not as cohesive a plot as the first. I’m glad that Nick was gone for most of the book, since his and Bree’s relationship is the most boring part, and I was gleeful to find the four most interesting characters thrust together, travelling together. Those relationships were always going to be more stimulating and zingy. We weren’t let down, with three sizzling scenes in particular stealing the show of the whole book (the sealing up of Sel’s bandage in the bathroom at the safe house scene, the scene in the corridor waiting while Alice is in the toilet at the crossroads bar, and the scene in the clearing by the waterfall). The whole book is worth those three scenes between Sel and Bree! Alice is still my favourite character though.

There were also so many powerful and profound quotes that I found myself wanting to write down to remember them. They are even more impressive in context but still are incredible by themselves. Here are a few that particularly stood out to me:

‘The unsaid thing about funerals is that directly after the communal mourning for someone you love, after everyone is gone, […], comes a solitude beyond imagining, a great gaping nothing, where a whole person and life and future used to be. The other side of a funeral is abyss.’

‘I do have an idea. But grief isn’t a competition. It’s not an identical pain that we all meet one day when death finds us. It’s a monster, personalised by our love and memories to devour us just so. Grief is suffering, tailored.’

‘Half a heart is not enough to live a whole life, is it. The clawing grief reaches for me all over again, even though I thought I’d escaped it, the fear of death hunting me, searching for the remainder of the heart it’s already broken and who it will take from me to get it.’

‘You don’t believe history is true. You won’t even admit it’s possible’
– this quote is from a potent scene that’s talking about racism and violence. Even when the truth is right in front of them and Bree is the very evidence that the events in question happened, it’s not treated as fact. It can be applied to so many different circumstances; anybody who hasn’t been believed, who has experienced people saying that something hasn’t happened when it has, that it’s impossible that what you say is true, will relate to this and punch the air.

‘Since when has a man’s title prevented his brutality instead of further emboldening it.’

‘Wanting something fiction to be fact, and having the power to convince other folks of the same; that’s how power stays put.’

‘Fairy Tale’ by Stephen King

 
This is the first book by Stephen King that I’ve ever read. Horror is the one genre that I won’t read under any circumstance so I didn’t think his writing was for me but ‘Fairy Tale’ is a fantasy story so I decided to give it a go. Ironically, it was the non-fantasy parts of the book that I really enjoyed. The characters, relationships and atmosphere were built up skilfully in the first third of the book (this first portion of the story didn’t really have any fantasy elements to it), and I came to genuinely care about Charlie, his father and the elderly man and his dog up the road with whom Charlie makes friends.

The writing was cinematic in the vividness of the world it conjured in one’s mind’s eye. One never felt lost during all Charlie’s travels and one had an accurate depiction of the world and the direction one was moving through it.

This book doesn’t feel like a typical fantasy novel. There aren’t lots of complicated plot threads coming together, with surprises and thrilling revelations. When it reaches the fantasy portion of the book, it’s a portal fantasy, a simple enough journey, with a series of action sequences throughout. It’s more like a thriller than a fantasy. I did really enjoy it though.

Plus, Stephen King annoyed me into looking up the definition of two words by repeatedly using them when I had no clue as to what they meant! So I’ve added two words (‘mephitic’ and ‘eldritch’) to my vocabulary, which is a bonus.

There are a few problematic themes involving disability, disfigurement and villainy, but Jen Campbell covers this topic in stories really well here:

 
This is the sequel to ‘The Atlas Six’. I actually enjoyed this book more than the first; in my opinion it was paced a lot better. The first half of ‘The Atlas Six’ was unbearably slow before properly kicking into gear, whereas the author’s progression as a writer in ‘The Atlas Paradox’ is apparent both through it being more evenly paced and also cutting down on overly long philosophical waffle. The main six characters are still resolutely unlikeable. All of them. I know this is on trend and meant to show “realistic”, three-dimensional characters but come on! Give me someone to root for please. They don’t all have to be relentlessly repulsive people. It would be more realistic if one of them showed a sign of even one redeeming characteristic. Somehow it was still enjoyable though; maybe it was returning into the minds of familiar characters that was comforting.

The ensemble of voice actors continued to be grating. Both the British accents sound fake (it definitely sounds like Americans attempting British accents rather than real British accents). At least they were understandable though; the vocal fry of the voice actor narrating Parisa occasionally made a few words unintelligible. She also didn’t enunciate well enough; I appreciate that this may have been in service of an acting decision to embody the character as being laid back and seductive but all it did was irritate me when I missed phrases here and there.

Overall, it was worth reading and I’m interested enough to listen to the next book in the series but it wouldn’t be among the first books that I’d recommend to friends.

I did however love the following reference popping up near the end of the book (‘it was ultimately a test of who could outman, outlast and magically outgun’) as a nod to George Washington’s line from ‘Hamilton’ (‘we are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, out-planned’). That was a fun Easter Egg and made me smile. I love Hamilton.

The first 3 books of ‘The School for Good and Evil’ series (‘The School for Good and Evil’, ‘A World Without Princes’ and ‘The Last Ever After’) series by Soman Chainani

 
These may be the silliest books I’ve ever read! If you think about any part of them (plot, concepts, characters) for more than a couple of seconds, it all falls apart. Best to disengage the brain if you just need a bit of escapist fluff. It’s never a good sign when a little way into a book you think ‘this was definitely written by a man’. Sure enough, I looked it up and the author is a man. It’s full of things that girls/women would never do or say. There are lots of lazy stereotypes too and some inappropriate descriptions of girls.

Most of the children who are sorted into The School for Good almost all seem to be awful people – vain, vacuous bullies – who are terrible to Agatha. It makes no sense that they’ve been deemed “good” compared to the children who have been sorted into the School for Evil, many of whom are loyal friends and far better people. Hester is the best character in the whole series.

The books seem to rehash the same things over and over (is Sophie good? Is she bad? Is she good? Is she bad? On and on and on). It’s obvious to the reader from the start that Sophie is not a great person; she’s unbelievably selfish and willing to use people then discard them. It’s utterly bizarre that after she murders a whole bunch of wolves and fairies (who are actually humans who have been turned into these creatures) at the end of book one, it’s basically never mentioned again and has zero consequences. I know Agatha is a faithful friend but there’s no reason why she would continue on insisting that Sophie is Good, after these murders and all her betrayals.

It’s clear that there shouldn’t be a division into Good and Evil. At the end of book one, Agatha gives a speech about how nobody is fully good or evil but that everyone has both good and bad inside them. Finally some sense…which is then entirely disregarded and forgotten as if it never happened for the rest of the series.

In the second book, the author is clearly trying to say something about feminism, or at least his warped idea of what it is. The second book seems to be a weird, derisive view of what the author thinks that women think of as empowerment and equality. It’s a truly bizarre read. He definitely seems to be saying something, I’m just not entirely sure what that something is. I don’t think he knows either.

It only gets more creepy, when in the third book, a two hundred-year-old man (who conveniently has changed to look like a teenager) is cast as the supposed “true love” of Sophie, a young teenager, whom he first picked out and kidnapped when she was twelve years old. Twelve.

I don’t know why I’ve continued to listen to this rubbish. There are three books left in the series. If you’ve read them, does it get any better? Does the author finally work out what he’s trying to say? Does the story arc around and redeem itself at all?

___________________________

Links to my previous Audiobook Adventures:

My Audiobook Adventures #1

My Audiobook Adventures #2

My favourite books (this is essentially My Audiobook Adventures #2.5!)

My Audiobook Adventures #3

My Audiobook Adventures #4

<p>The post My Audiobook Adventures #5: August 2022 – February 2023 first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>

The longer that I’m left without the surgery I need, the more damage to my neck occurs. As we continue to try to fundraise the money needed for the life-saving surgery and air ambulance flights (I’d be grateful for any donations: GoFundMe.com/savejenny), I have to fight harder and harder to stay alive as the situation deteriorates every day. It is relentlessly unbearable. Nobody should be left like this.

Thank you to everyone who has donated and who has helped spread my story and fundraising link on social media. We’ve still got a long way to go but I’m very grateful for the generosity and kindness of so many.

My poetry book ‘We Are The Winter People’ is raising money towards my surgery and is available to buy as a paperback, audiobook and ebook here: https://mybook.to/WinterPeople

Thank you to family and friends who gave me the audiobooks below for my birthday (though a couple of them were still left from Christmas!). Audiobooks are all that I have left and they keep me going. I love writing my opinions of them here in my Audiobook Adventures. It’s increasingly hard for my brain to function as my neck becomes more damaged without the surgery to fix it, and a lot of the time I’m unable to understand/process words and sentences. I’ve managed to gradually cobble together the reviews below in the times that I am more ‘with it’. I can only hold my phone up to my eyes (it’s too dangerous to move my neck so I can’t look downwards to see the screen of my phone so I have to lift my phone above my head at eye level to see the screen) for roughly 30 seconds at a time so it’s taken a long time to gradually write these. Writing brings me great pleasure though so I consider it worth it. I love the thought that I might bring someone else joy if they read a book that they enjoy as a result of one of my reviews.

Thankfully, with Audible, you can slow down the speed of the narration. Due to my brain being impaired, I can’t listen at the normal speed (x1); I have to listen to these audiobooks at 0.7 or 0.8 speed.

I always need more book recommendations so please leave your favourites in the comments (remember they have to be available on Audible for me to be able to access them)! What books have you been reading recently? I’d love to hear in the comments. I’m in the mood for some dystopian fiction or science fiction (ultimately with happy endings please) and memoir, if you have any recommendations for those three genres. As you’ll see below, I’ve read a lot of fantasy recently and it would be nice to have more of some other genres thrown in the mix.

REVIEWS

‘Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow’, ‘Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow’ and ‘Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow’ by Jessica Townsend

I ended up loving this series of books and can’t wait for the next one in the series to come out. It’s often compared to Harry Potter but actually the thing that I found most similar about the two series is the feeling that you get by the end of reading them. The feeling of home and cosiness, with a world and cast of characters that become so familiar and loved that you sink into them with a contented sigh, feeling like you’re snugly wrapped up in and hugged by a thick squishy duvet.

The first book (‘Nevermoor’) was a bit slow getting started; I know that the characters and world were being established but I was impatient to get to the Wundrous Society and the trials already! A lot of unnecessary time seemed to be spent faffing about at the Hotel Deucalion and it was odd that they basically were waiting a whole year, without schooling, just to see whether they would get into the school (or ‘Wundrous Society’). But I would encourage you to wait it out; stopping reading this book before you get to the WunSoc, would be like giving up on Harry Potter before you reach Hogwarts! You do have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit more than with other fantasy, what with the wunimals and such, but if you allow yourself, it becomes a gloriously fun story. I loved the trials. The second book ‘Wundersmith’ is my favourite in the series so far; I loved all the mystery, discoveries, figuring out the Tricksy Lanes and Morrigan finding out more about her powers. The plot of ‘Hollowpox’ reminded of the film ‘Zootropolis’ (‘Zootopia’ in other countries) but that didn’t change how wonderfully enjoyable it was. Thoroughly recommend this series! So fun.

‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin

Given how beloved, award-winning and well-regarded this book is in the fantasy genre, I was anticipating it to be a new favourite. Unfortunately, I didn’t get on well with it at all. It felt like the slowest-paced book in existence and it was a struggle to force myself to keep going. I kept thinking that surely surely it was going to “get good” soon…but no.

As a reader (listener) I felt incredibly distanced from the characters and plot, which I don’t think was caused by the parts that were written in the second person (I actually didn’t mind the second person at all). The whole thing was strangely emotionless and detached; we were never properly let into the thoughts and feelings of the characters. As a reader (listener), you need a way in, and we just weren’t given one. For me the characters had no flair or charisma; they were dull. And oh, it was so sooo slow.

I understand the appeal; the world is unique and the concept is truly original, which is difficult to come by in any genre. I did find myself thinking about the story long after I finished the book, along with the big themes it subtly deals with, but that wasn’t enough to rescue it for me. I have no desire to continue the series at this point (unless someone tells me that it gets a lot better). I enjoyed the last eighth of the book or so but unfortunately I’d guessed ridiculously early on in the book what I assume were meant to be big reveals and surprises nearer the end, which was disappointing because I like being surprised and having ‘wow’ moments.

I don’t know if it was the actual narrator of the audiobook or just the narrative style of the book at the beginning, but I found the tone unbearably smug and annoying in the prologue especially.

The part that I enjoyed most was Damaya at the Fulcrum.

Lots of people love this book and it has won awards so don’t let my subjective opinion put you off reading it if you’re curious about it! You might love it, especially if you enjoy literary fiction. It just wasn’t for me. If you’ve read it, let me know your opinions in the comments!

‘The Atlas Six’ by Olivie Blake

This was another very slow-starting book but this time, it was actually worth wading through the first half and the twist at the end was good. I’m a sucker for any sort of competition in a storyline and six of the most talented magicians in the world are competing for five spaces in a magical secret society. The story is told from six different points of view…unfortunately none of the characters are remotely likeable. I know that it’s the trendy thing for characters to be unlikeable and “realistic” but surely it would be more realistic that at least one of them would have at least one redeeming quality. It would have made the book far more enjoyable. The ending made the experience worth it; overall I would say that the book was alright but not one that I’d be excitedly urging my friends to read to share the experience.

‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller

I wasn’t bored once in this book, which is unusual for me! It’s a flowing, well written and compelling story set in the mythology of Ancient Greece, focussing on the growing friendship of Achilles and Patroclus (I won’t say more than that because…spoilers!) and later their part in the Trojan War.

Having studied the (Ancient) Greek language at GCSE and A-Level, a lot of the joy of this book for me was recognising all sorts of characters and names from the passages of text that I used to translate (Agamemnon! Menelaus! Clytemnestra! “I know them!” my brain would shout happily as they popped up). It brought back happy school memories and also the thrill of racing to be the first one to translate a piece of text.

I usually don’t read books with sad endings but I was at least a little insulated from that because I knew roughly what was going to happen, so could prepare myself.

I’m planning on listening to ‘Circe’ by the same author too. Is it as good?

‘A Gift Upon the Shore’ by M.K. Wren

As a teen I hoovered up any book in the genre of what I call ‘nuclear fiction’ (‘Fall-out’ by Gudrun Pausewang, ‘Children of the Dust’ by Louise Lawrence and ‘Brother in the Land’ by Robert Swindells): any story involving either nuclear bombs or accidents at a nuclear power station and the immediate aftermath from them. I love that stuff. This book focuses on the friendship of two women in the U.S., the narrative alternating between the present and the past – before, during and after the nuclear bombs fall. It thus should have been more exciting than it turned out to be. I still enjoyed it but it was more of a slow, thoughtful and philosophical read (listen), though there were some exciting parts. But the nuclear aspect of it was rather anti-climactic and underwhelming.

‘Sabriel’, ‘Lirael’ and ‘Abhorsen’ by Garth Nix

I hadn’t read this fantasy trilogy since my mid teens and was eager to be able to listen to them again. They held up well, which isn’t always the case. I definitely had got a few things mixed up in my memory though! It was a joy to come back to them again. I still loved the character of Sabriel, though this time around I appreciated Lirael more too. Sabriel is sort of perfect and you always know that she’ll do what’s needed. Lirael is more relatable, struggles more and hasn’t got everything sorted; I don’t think I appreciated the value of that the first time around. I’d forgotten about the Disreputable Dog and how much I liked her; I’m glad to have got reacquainted! If you’re into fantasy, this might be an enjoyable series for you.

‘The Marvellers’ by Dhonielle Clayton

This audiobook narrator is the worst I’ve ever come across. It’s like she has never encountered words before. Her voice sounds like a screen reader – as if she’s just reading individual words with no sense of them in the context of a sentence. She pronounces some words so bizarrely that they’re unrecognisable and you have to guess what the word is from the context. And for a few words, she pronounces the exact same word in a different way each time. I’ve never encountered an audiobook with this poor a standard of narration; you would have thought a producer would go back and re-record any glaring mistakes but no.

So it’s quite something when I say that I can’t wait to read the next book in the series when it comes out! It was really fun. Just please please please get a new narrator! I nearly gave up on the story many times because of the narrator.

I love me a magic school setting though! The main character is interesting and has a really hard time of it, starting at the new school, with teachers and students being hostile and against her admittance to the school for having “bad” light as the source of her magic. The book deals with themes of prejudice and discrimination well, appropriate for the age range at which the book is aimed.

‘Morning Star’ by Pierce Brown

This is the third book in the original dystopian sci-fi ‘Red Rising’ trilogy. In my review of the first two books of the series in my last Audiobook Adventures, looking back, I think that I was overly harsh on the first book. This trilogy has made it into my top 10 series of books. Yes, it may be brutal and the author kills off more beloved characters than George R.R. Martin, but you won’t find many books out there more thrilling and exciting. It’s very hard to talk about without giving away spoilers so I’ll just say that the ending is genius. Absolutely euphoric. Definitely recommend, though with the warning that it’s brutal.

‘This Is Not A Pity Memoir’ by Abi Morgan

I really don’t know what possessed me to listen to this. Given the medical incompetence, abuse and trauma I’ve experienced, it wasn’t the wisest decision. The concept of someone waking up from a coma thinking that his wife is an imposter and not his “real” wife was just too intriguing , I guess. But just the mention of the ‘d’ word (doctor) or ‘h’ word (hospital) is too much for me these days and the flashbacks and trauma are too great. I did finish the book and I’m sure many people will find a lot of meaning in it. It just wasn’t for me at this point in my medical history. I found lots of it deeply problematic too in terms of ableism, especially as the story is being told by the loved one looking on, as opposed to the person actually going through the ordeal.

As an aside, from a throwaway sentence in this book, if any nurse tells you that a relative in hospital is “refusing to eat”, don’t take it at their word or assume that your relative doesn’t want to eat or is being difficult. Often a plate of food is just left on a table to a patient that is not able to feed themselves or doesn’t have the strength to lift cutlery or cut up food themselves. When the food is left uneaten, instead of deducing that the patient needs help with eating, nurses often tell relatives that the patient is refusing to eat. Always check. Make sure your relative is getting the help they need instead of being left to starve, being too weak to communicate their needs.

‘Letters From Brenda: Two Suitcases. 75 Lost Letters. One Mother.’ by Emma Kennedy

Out of all the books above, this was my favourite. It’s a stunningly written memoir. Living under a rock, I had never heard of Emma Kennedy before but this book is absolutely fascinating, about her life and her mother’s life, inextricably intertwined. Her mother’s issues are complex but she’s a mesmerising character. This book deftly, sensitively and also, very amusingly, brings together the complicated picture of her mother.

The audiobook is wonderful, with Juliet Stevenson reading the entertaining letters written by Brenda, Emma’s mother, with interjections and notes from Emma. It perfectly captures the different facets of her mother’s character and the backstory shows how she came to be the way she was.

I’ve already made my Mum listen to this book! I’m sure I’ll be evangelistic about it to others too. When I enjoy something, I want others to share in the pleasure! It’s an irresistible book. Only an incredible writer could have the talent to accomplish something of this scope and nuance. A great read (listen).

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Links to previous reviews:

My Audiobook Adventures #1

My Audiobook Adventures #2

My favourite books (this is essentially My Audiobook Adventures #2.5!)

My Audiobook Adventures #3

The more eagle-eyed among you will notice that my intro for Audiobook Adventures #3 is the same as my intro for this current Audiobook Adventures #4. Apologies! I’m just not up to writing a different introduction this time around as I have worsened quite significantly.

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Other things to which I’ve been listening:

• Podcasts:
The Friendship Onion, Sounding The Shallows, The God Journey, and Best Worst Movies

• the Swimming World Championships:
one of the things that makes me most happy is listening to the swimming commentators Andy Jameson and Adrian Moorhouse. When they are together, they are magic; not only are they incredible at the professional part of their job (so much so that I don’t even feel like I’m missing out by only being able to listen, not watch, the swimming, because they describe it so vividly, accurately, with such enthusiasm and with such a wealth of knowledge of the sport) but also they’ve been friends for so long that their chat is natural and I love it when their friendship overflows to us when they can be wonderfully silly between races too, making each other, and us, laugh. Unfortunately Adrian wasn’t at the World Championships so Andy had different commentating partners (though he was still brilliant) but I’m looking forward to listening to the swimming at the Commonwealth Games when Andy and Adrian will be back together: the dream team! Just the thought of the joy that I know it will bring me makes me smile. I love them! I much prefer their funny chatter instead of the repetitive waffle of the presenters in the studio, so I always try to find the BBC stream that’s dedicated solely to the swimming (which is 100% Andy and Adrian commentating), as opposed to the BBC main channel, where there are presenters on camera (whom I don’t enjoy nearly so much and they go on and on talking rubbish), with some races being missed out in favour of listening to them. Or sometimes, they’ll switch to another sport while there’s still swimming going on. Rude!

<p>The post My Audiobook Adventures #4: March-July 2022 first appeared on Jenny Rowbory.</p>