A muddled fantasy romance (yes, I hate the word ‘romantasy’). Title: Paladin’s Grace Author: T. Kingfisher Year: 2020 Publisher: Argyll Productions / Tantor Audio Genre: Fantasy / Romance / Mystery Format read: Audio Narrator: Joel Richards Plot setup: Stephen is a sock-knitting paladin whose god has just died, so he has no divine purpose anymore.

A cosy food tale to balance the consistent dread of a haunted child… I finished two novels this week, Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz and Incidents Around The House by Josh Malerman. The first one was a quick fill-in to use up my monthly listening hours on Spotify; the second was a stone-cold horror masterpiece. Automatic Noodle is the story of a bunch of sentient robots living in San Francisco after a war of independence for California, and is set in the 2060s.

Fun world-building but plot feels lacklustre Title: Phoenix Extravagant Author: Yoon Ha Lee Year: 2020 Publisher: Recorded Books Genre: Fantasy Format read: Audio via Spotify Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller Plot setup: Jebi is an artist living under imperial occupation, and they need a job. They know that taking one at the Ministry of Armor, where paints and pigments are magically used to bring life-like power to imperial war machines, is a betrayal of everything their sister Bongsunga stands for, but they need to eat.

Title: A Memory Called Empire Author: Arkady Martine Year: 2019 Publisher: MacMillan Audio Genre: Science fiction Format read: Audio via Libby Narrator: Amy Landon Plot setup: We are on Teixcalaan, the centre of the almighty and intergalactic Teixcalaanli Empire. Mahit Dzmar is the ambassador from Lsel Station, a currently-independent republic which sits on the outskirts of the Empire, and she is brand new in the job.

I’m going to attempt a re-start of last year’s effort to review all the books I finish this year, once a week if I can. Just one book this week: Title: Nightwatching Author: Tracy Sierra Year: 2024 Publisher: Penguin Audio Genre: Psychological thriller Format read: Audio via Libby Narrator: Emily Ellet Plot setup: An unnamed mother wakes up in the middle of a winter’s night and hears noises in her isolated house.

Deliberately provocative headline? Sure, but I have a point… Image by Patrik Houštecký from Pixabay I’ve just finished reading Foundation by Isaac Asimov (first published in 1951) and I genuinely don’t know how it became such a revered science fiction classic. As well as what I consider some fundamental storytelling issues which come from collecting four short stories into a ‘novel,’ Asimov’s imagination is peculiarly limited in places.

I’m not especially interested in books simply because they win prizes; I’m a genre fan in my reading life, getting most of my enjoyment from well-told horror, sci-fi and fantasy novels in the main, with the odd thriller thrown in for good measure. But I noticed this was available on audio through Libby (i.e. free, thank you libraries!) and was curious about the subject matter, so gave it a try.

In The Shawshank Redemption (1994), main character Andy Dufresne sets up a prison library and gets his less-than-well-educated co-prisoners to help him unpack books. One of them picks up this novel and announces the author’s name, raising a laugh in the middle of a film that sorely needs them: “Alexander Dumb-ass.” It’s a quote that has entered the ‘library of family references only my wife and I get’ that regularly annoys our children, but as I listened to the audiobook of…

Magos and Joseph have just lost their son, Santiago, to a long-term health condition. Filled with grief, Magos decides to cut out a piece of his dead lung and nurtures it into a sentient being, relying on folk tale logic and her shaky maternal instincts to raise it into ‘childhood.’ What she does not anticipate are the challenges of its more aggressive tendencies – Monstrilio needs to feed regularly, and not in a socially acceptable way.

An alien (the Esca) appears on Earth, projecting itself to every human at the same time to inform us that we are one quite boring species in a multiplicity of alien beings spread across the galaxy, and they have all just found out about us. They believe we may be sentient, but to ensure this is true, they insist that we must take part in the Metagalactic Grand Prix, a song contest which has been happening on various planets since the end of the Sentience Wars.