Latest Book Reviews - The Reading Project is independently run to provide reviews of books from a variety of genres, as well as engage in long-term projects of personal interest.
Terry Pratchett’s fourth Discworld novel, Mort , is where, depending on your opinion, Pratchett really hit his stride in the Discworld series. Young Mort becomes apprenticed to Death, the anthropomorphised embodiment we are familiar with as the Grim Reaper. Eventually, Mort is allowed to go collecting the dead on his own. Except things go wrong when Mort spares the life of the beautiful Princess…
Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times to help prop up the circulation of his weekly periodical, Household Words . It was the first novel he published that was not accompanied by illustrations and except for his Christmas stories, it was his shortest book. Hard Times is about the industrial town, Coketown, and the people who live there. Children at Mr Gradgrind’s school are taught nothing but “Facts”…
In her latest review, Toriaz looks at Saratoga Schaefer’s Trad Wife . As its name implies, the book is based on the question of Tradition Wives, particularly prevalent in the US. Toriaz’s review considers Yesteryear by Claro Claire Burke, as well, and discusses why she thinks Trad Wife is a more positive book, in comparison. This book is bloody and gory and I loved it. I'm normally fairly…
Toriaz has published the latest review for The Golden Age of Murder project, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie. The plot trick here is one that Christie has used in a few of her books, but that doesn’t take anything away from how Christie uses it this time. The twists and mis-directions are handled really well in this one, with some very clever writing. It works as a good…
Neptunes Bounty returns with a review of Stephen King’s first collection of short stories, featuring tales of horror and the macabre. Night Shift is the first of Stephen King’s short story collections, and it is probably one that I remember more fondly than others. In particular, ‘Children of the Corn’ affected me deeply as a young teenager when I was within only a couple years of the nominated…
The first page of a new project has been completed today. Virgil’s Aeneid can be read as a kind of sequel to the stories of the Trojan War. Written under the patronage of Emperor Augustus, The Aeneid tells the story of a group of Trojans fleeing Troy after its destruction, led by Aeneas, to begin a new Trojan civilisation in Italy. The Aeneid provides a glorious mythical origin story for Rome,…
Taiwan Travelogue is the winner of this year’s International Booker Prize. Set in 1938 when Taiwan was under Japanese control, the novel tells the story of the relationship between a young Japanese author visiting Taiwan and her interpreter. Click the button to read the review . . . Taiwan Travelogue is a brilliant evocation of this time and place, as well as the cultural tensions that underly the…
Joe Abercrombie’s new fantasy series is set in an alterative Medieval Europe. A group of powerful criminals are tasked with escorting the newly-discovered heir to the Serpent Throne of Troy across Europe, controlled by a powerful binding spell by the 10-year-old Pope Benedicta. The book is highly entertaining but not without some faults. You know this kind of story. If you’re older, you might…
Skelequin's review of The Only Good Indians looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians , as she explains why she wouldn't recommend this book, but why she might consider reading other books by this author in the future. The Only Good Indians is a great story conceptually, but its biggest problem is the fact that it is a novel, not a short story. It simply…
Skelequin returns with a new review for Stephen King’s Pet Semetary Stephen King has famously said that he considers Pet Semetary the scariest of all his novels. Given the personal nature of the story, this really should be no surprise. King reportedly wrote the novel after his daughter’s cat was hit and killed by a truck, an event that makes it practically one-for-one into the novel. The…
A.R. Tivadar’s latest review is for the Japanese novel by Natsuko Imamura, The Woman in the Purple Skirt . It won the prestigious Japanese Akutagawa Prize in 2019 upon its release. See what A.R. Tivadar has to say about it by clicking the link . . . I enjoyed this weird little book for the most part, but it lost me in the final chapters. I wouldn’t call it an anticlimactic ending per se, but no…
Today we’ve published a new reviewer, Crypt Maiden, who has reviewed Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy . You can read her take on this classic fantasy by clicking on the link . . . As I write this, the crickets chirp outside my window and my toddler son sleeps soundly downstairs. I can hear my husband strumming his guitar while my dog snores on her bed. I feel like my family is a whole unit, and I am a…
Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is a retelling of a scene from late in Homer’s Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife who has waited for twenty years for him to return home from war. After the suitors who have hounded Penelope to marry one of them are killed, Odysseus orders the killing of twelve of Penelope’s maids. It is a brutal, dark moment in The Odyssey . Atwood’s retelling…
Shadow Moses’s latest review on his ongoing series of reviews for James Bond is for Ian Fleming’s fifth book in the series (second in the film series) From Russia, With Love . In this book Bond’s personal weakness for women and his vanity are used to lure him into an assassination plot. A large section of the novel is devoted to Bond essentially tailing Kerim through various points of intrigue,…
Christopher Logue spent decades of his life writing a modern interpretation of Homer's Iliad . It spoke to the conditions of 20th Century War and social inequalities of sex and class. This review is accompanied by an essay by Dr Michael Jackson, written over forty years ago when Logue’s work was mostly still incomplete. You can find links to that essay in the sidebar of the review. War Music: An…
Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s best-known mysteries, and one of the best murder stories ever written. In this review, Toriaz discusses the book and how Christie’s personal experiences and current events of the time contributed to her inspiration for the book. Like many of Christie’s books, this has a fairly light-hearted tone, despite the emotional storyline. But…
Dr Michael Jackson’s latest review covers the French Canadian classic about the working class, The Tin Flute . Roy enters into the lives of her characters, or maybe it is the other way around, they have entered into her life and she chronicles their determination, dignity, forbearance, and humiliations in a world they did not make, but in which theirs is to make the best of it if that they can.…
As part of Homer month, I have posted another review for a book that relates to The Iliad . In this case, a Canadian academic posted to Oxford University for a year discovers a new epic poem about the Trojan War, in Yann Martel’s latest novel Son of Nobody . His efforts to study it and reconstruct it lead to the breakdown of his own personal and professional life. Yann Martel’s latest book, Son of…
A.R. Tivadar reviews Megan Campisi’s debut novel, The Sin Eater , a story about a young girl forced to take on the burden of others’ sins so they might go to heaven, all because she once stole a loaf of bread because she was hungry. A sin-eater was a real position that existed from medieval times well into the 20th century, particularly in Northern England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. When a…
I’ve finished the final book of The Odyssey today. This means the Homer section of this project is complete, although there will be ongoing additions to these pages in the future. Work on the rest of the Epic Cycle pages will begin sometime in the future. From the page . . . Now, the narrative moves back into the masculine world one last time to focus upon the potential aftermath of Odysseus’…
Alessandro Baricco produced his version of Homer’s Iliad for public performance. It shortened the work by sticking to the key moments in the text and by removing the gods from the story. Find out why I thought this was a weak retelling by reading the review . . . Overall, I would not consider this an insightful retelling. The primary focus is on the events of the story, as Baricco chooses to tell…
If you are only vaguely aware of J.B. Priestley’s stage play, An Inspector Calls you may think it is just another example of the kind of crime drama seen on the stage and read in books during the 1940s when it was first produced. But there is a lot more to the play. Read the review to find our what Priestley’s play had to do with Soviet Russia, working class issues, George Orwell and Obi-wan…
We’ve just put up another page for Book 23 of Homer’s Odyssey . In Book 23 Odysseus and Penelope are reunited as husband and wife after Odysseus reveals to Penelope information only he could know about their marriage bed and their marriage chamber. The final book for this project will be completed next month. From the page . . . Central to this book, and to The Odyssey overall, is the idea of…
We’ve just put up another page for Book 22 of Homer’s Odyssey . In Book 22 Odysseus slaughters the suitors with the help of his son, Telemachus, and his loyal servants, Eumaeus and Philoetius. From the page . . . In Book 22 Odysseus finally takes action against the suitors, supported by his son Telemachus, his swineherd Eumaeus, and Philoetius, his loyal cowherd. With the support of the goddess…
Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught If Fortunate takes its title from the message on Voyager’s gold recording disk from the 1977 UN Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim. The Voyager missions were nominally the means to explore the outer Solar System, but almost 50 years later they are a symbol of scientific achievement and the most idealistic hopes of the human race. In Becky Chambers’ novel a crew of four…
Shadow Moses has undertaken to review Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels in order (not the same order as the films), and so he has returned this month with Fleming’s fourth James Bond, Diamonds are Forever . For the most part, Diamonds Are Forever is best when it comes to the bit parts and memorable sequences: limo driver and snitch Ernie Cureo, Shady Tree, Seraffimo Spang in his cowboy getup and…
The International Booker Prize for 2026 is announced next week. I decided to get ahead of that and read one book from this year’s shortlist. The Witch is the story of a witch with weak powers who is abandoned by her husband and then by her two daughters. It is a story about loss and alienation, but there is a lot more going on besides . . . At only one hundred and thirty pages, The Witch is a slim…
A.R. Tivadar reviews Claudia Piñeiro’s Thursday Night Widows , a novel about a privileged gated community, Cascade Heights, that is upended after three men are found dead in a swimming pool in one night. From the very first pages there is a very palpable oppressive atmosphere. Altos de la Cascada is perfect: imposing mansions, carefully mowed lawns and curated gardens, cul-de-sacs, golf courses,…
I’ve just finished my review for Felix Holt: The Radical George Eliot’s fifth novel. Felix Holt was a return to an English setting after Eliot's novel, Romola , set in Renaissance Italy. Felix Holt is set just after the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. It is the story of a love triangle, an unlooked-for inheritance, and the problems facing English society as the push for widening the vote became…
We’ve just put up another page for Book 21 of Homer’s Odyssey . Only three books to go. The last page should be published early June in plenty of time for Christopher Nolan’s screen adaptation. In Book 21 Odysseus finally reveals his identity to the suitors by stringing his bow and making an impossible shot through twelve axes. From the page . . . Making this shot through the axes is like Robin…
A.R. Tivadar’s latest review for Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows looks at a story about living in the world with a debilitating illness while at the same time trying to get justice for a dead daughter whom the authorities believe committed suicide. Elena Knows is a novel that takes place over the course of one day, featuring Elena, a woman in her sixties with Parkinson’s disease. She lives in Buenos…
The Red Winter is the first published book by Australian writer Cameron Sullivan. It’s a mash-up of Historical Fiction, Horror and Fantasy. Beginning with the execution of Joan of Arc in the 15th century, but set primarily in 18th century France, it is the story of love as well as the hunt for a Beast that is murdering people by the hundreds across the French countryside. Tantalisingly, the story…
It is turn-of-the-century New York leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s unnamed female protagonist has withdrawn from the world with the help of drugs to spend the next year sleeping as much as she can. A.R. Tivadar responds to Moshfegh’s second novel with criticism in this, her latest review for the Reading Project. There is a good premise here, but the…
Skep returns to reviewing with the third book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series, Equal Rites ! This being my first time reading the Discworld novels in order of release, I’m only now struck by how significant a departure Equal Rites is from Pratchett’s first two novels. On the face of it, it’s exactly what you would expect from what we’ve seen so far: an offbeat adventure through a fantasy…