Hi all! Below is a reposting of some book reviews I wrote for my Goodreads page. I hope they're useful!
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
(5/5 stars)
I've got to be honest from the get-go: Gideon the Ninth is amazing! This is the best book I've read in YEARS! The main characters are all so perfectly crafted, and you love them all, even if the titular Gideon is, in the words of author Tamsyn Muir 'a dickhead'. The writing just leaps off the page and never gets in the way of the story it's trying to tell. It's written with such sharp humour, too, that I was often caught laughing out loud on the bus. I would kill to be able to write like that!
The universe that the story takes place within is incredibly original; I've only ever read stories where necromancy is featured as 'that thing you NEVER do', until, of course, somebody goes and does it, with catastrophic consequences. In the world of Gideon, however, necromancy is the only magic game in town, and so everyone is reanimating bones, trying to talk to the dead, and creating flesh shields around themselves. It's deliciously graphic, gory, and gruesome, but in a way that always feels natural, and never done purely for the shock value. The images of the various creatures, monsters, and spectres are DYING to be turned into an anime adaptation of the book.
The sense of mystery within Gideon's pages continually fills you will suspense, and once I started reading, I NEEDED answers to the plot's central questions, so I found myself working less and less as I read more and more, no matter where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing.
The book is queer AF, too, providing some much-needed lesbian representation in the fantasy and sci-fi pantheon. In conclusion, Gideon the Ninth is just great, so go and read it now!
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
(5/5 stars)
The sense of wonder and exploration that this novella gives you is phenomenal, and as with all Becky Chambers books, the characters start to feel like your family and you really root for them throughout the story. The worlds that Becky Chambers creates are so detailed, and her philosophy of exploring places thoughtfully without affecting them is incredibly thoughtful and permeates the whole book. I was absolutely sucked in from the beginning and couldn't put it down until I'd finished it!
All The Birds in The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
(4/5 stars)
I loved this book! Its mixture of a hard-scifi world and a whimsical magical one is so imaginative. The characters are extremely well-written and so I cared a lot about the relationship between Laurence and Patricia, even if I think that Patricia could do better! It's a bit darker than I thought it would be and I would have liked to see a few more moments of lightness dotted around the book, but overall it's fab!
Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in A World That Wants to Shrink You by Sophie Hagen
(5/5 stars)
This book exposes the way that fat people are treated in our society and makes the case for people being able to live free from discrimination regardless of their weight. It also exposes some pretty shocking facts about the way healthcare research is performed, which show that researcher bias is responsible for a lot of things we think we know about fat people.
The writing is warm and funny, and this book has really opened my eyes to the issues that fat people face every day. I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone, regardless of your weight.
Transgender Marxism by Jules Joanne Gleeson
(2/5 stars)
I was so excited about this book, but I have to admit to being disappointed. The entire thing is written in a sort of dense academic language which is largely impenetrable. It may be that the target audience for the book is other academics, but that would seem to be an odd choice for a book which talks a lot about liberating the proletariat. Why, then, would you make this book inaccessible to them?
The bits of Transgender Marxism that I could understand do seem to make the odd interesting and even important point, but these moments are so lost in the noise of the jargon that it was hard to get excited about them. If you have a really (and I mean really) thorough grounding in Marxist theory and the decades of associated analysis that goes with it, then this book might be for you, otherwise, you might want to stay clear.
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