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Nettle and Bone, by T. Kingfisher  

A sort-of princess, who is not quite a nun, builds a dog from bones to save her sister from an evil prince, because yes, this is simply the way things are done around here.

Picking up a delightful cast on route—an acerbic necromancer, a demon chicken, a bumbling fairy godmother and a stoical knight—our unlikely heroes must defeat a spell holding the kingdom in its power, and kill an evil prince before his heir’s christening. As you do.

“Magic never seemed to be much use at doing the things you wanted done in a reasonable time frame.” ― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

The novel is frankly adorable and was received with great excitement, winning the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel and being nominated for the 2023 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and the Nebula Award for Best Novel of 2022. The tone is wry, homely, and fun, and the fairytale setting is extravagant with world-building, taking us from ‘the blistered lands’ through medieval countryside to a goblin market, and finally the labyrinth of crypts below the palace.

This is a simple quest narrative, well told, and boasting a delightful cast of loveable characters. If you’re looking for an easy, pacy, feel-good read, this is it. Sure, there’s a dark side to the political fairytale marriage where the prince is not charming and the princesses are replaceable, but stick with your friends and everything will come right in the end. With real life so full of tragedy, a bit of ‘happily ever after’ is a welcome relief.

If you’ve already read Nettle and Bone, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £4.68 

Paperback from AbeBooks £7.43

Follow the author @UrsulaV and if you want more book recommendations, follow me at @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading, or check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime

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Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

In 1830’s plague-ridden Canton, a peasant boy with a mysterious ‘gift’, is whisked away from certain death. His saviour and patron, an imperious Oxford lecturer, brings him to England and oversees the boy’s induction into the mysterious art of silverwork.

The boy, now a young man named Robin Swift, is admitted into Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation, or as the students and teachers call it, “Babel”. Babel is no ordinary language school however. It is first and foremost a silverwork laboratory, producing enchanted silver bars which power everything from factory machinery, to warships. This makes Babel vital to Britain’s industrial prowess and a crucial lynchpin her colonial machinations.

“Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?” ― R.F. Kuang, Babel

Robin quickly falls in love; with Oxford, with academia, and with the other three other members of his cohort—all brilliant, young outsiders like himself. It isn’t long though, before putting his talent, and his mother tongue, to the service of the British Empire, starts to weigh on him.

Starting out as a sort of Dickensian Hogwarts, the novel shifts gears into a story of rebellion and resistance, reimagining Britain at the height of her colonial power, and the circumstances leading up to the opium wars. It is drowning in accolades, debuting at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, and winning Blackwell’s Books of the Year for Fiction and the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

It is a big, ambitious book; a bellowing rebuke to colonial violence and the white elites who profit to this day, amidst handwringing and lukewarm protestations of impotence.

The book asks poignant questions about when—and how much—violence is acceptable as a form of protest, and whether change is even possible in the face of massive imbalances of power. As with most historical fantasy, a dark mirror is clearly being held up to the present, inviting us to question where our loyalties lie and how far we would be prepared to go to prevent an abominable act of injustice.

If I were nitpicking, I’d say there were some pacing issues. At times the story shuffles along too slowly and at others, skips important character-developing scenes, to catch you up hurriedly afterwards. The book is long and evidently had too much to pack in. 

It deserves your patience. The world is seductive and the shift from ‘wizarding campus novel’ to resistance lit, is deftly handled. As a bonus, language nerds will love that the ‘magic’ is drawn from etymology; harnessing the power of meanings ‘lost in translation’ across languages sharing common roots. 

Language in Babel, is power—literally the power to bend material reality to its whim—and in this spirit perhaps the novel itself is a weapon; a reminder that certain fights are ongoing, and that sometimes, violence is indeed a necessity.

 If you’ve already read Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £0.99 

Paperback from WH Smiths £7.99

Follow the author @kuangrf and if you want more book recommendations, follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading or check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime

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Second Place by Rachel Cusk

An intimate work of feminist realism that doesn’t pull its punches. Told in the form of letters from its middle-aged, female narrator, M, it considers the terrible savagery of the human ego, and the atrocities it commits against itself and those it is closest to.

Why do we live so painfully in our fictions? Why do we suffer so, from the things we ourselves have invented?

M lives a secluded life with her second husband out on the swamp where he grew up. Scarred by the world and its brutality, she is nevertheless unwilling to detach completely, and so to nurture the sense she craves of being ‘connected’ to the art world, she invites artists in residence into her sanctuary. These visitors stay in ‘the second place’, a neighbouring cottage on their land. When she builds up the courage to invite an artist whose work struck her powerfully at a low point in her life, the impact of his presence unleashes unexpected violences, and forces her to confront some of her own. 

The novel considers the flimsy constructs we call identity, and how we piece together our personal narratives from the detritus of our own fantasies painted over by the assumptions and criticisms of others. It records the intricacies of M’s subjectivity with Tolstoyan exactitude, allowing her generosity and strength of spirit to exist alongside the petty, self-indulgent egoisms that underlie her desperate need to be seen.

The secondary characters too, sway unsettlingly between painfully sympathetic and revoltingly absurd, and the little cast assembled in the oppressive environs of the swamp, provide the raw materials for an unflinching psychodrama with notes of Shakespearean tragicomedy.

Published in 2021, The novel was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction. It’s a potent, powerful text, that catches and holds our gaze in its canvas, and dares us to look away.

If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £5.99 

Paperback from World of Books £10.89

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime

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Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead 

Strap in for an epic journey, following a female aviator (inspired by Amelia Earheart) who disappears while attempting to become the first person to fly a circle around the Earth, intersecting both poles.

The novel soars through a landscape rich with complex characters and intimate perspectives on historical events, spanning the turbulent years from the nineteen twenties to the modern day. The aviator, Marian Graves, is a single-minded force of nature, who refuses to allow the conventions of her time to restrict her. We accompany her through a childhood in rural Montana, dressing as a boy and smuggling alcohol during Prohibition, to her service as one of the first female pilots in England during the second world war, and finally, on her fateful journey over Antarctica.

At some point she would have found the edge of her own courage. There is nothing for it but to adjust, be humbled. So she is not exactly who she had thought. So what. She will be someone different.

The novel charts other stories too: that of Marian’s parents, her twin brother, Jamie, and their childhood friend, Celeb, as well as intermittently swerving into the present day where a Hollywood actress playing Marian in a movie about her life, pieces together clues about what might have become of her.

Marian remains the powerful engine of the book however, the perfect heroine for a novel grappling with the vertiginously widening scale of the twentieth century. With the backdrop of globe-trotting exploration, technological breakthroughs, and war, the restless hunger which drives Marian’s desire to fly (to keep moving, to escape), is equally fraught with a suicidal need to push boundaries and to toy with its own destruction. Perhaps this is why, for a story so full of life—its characters exploding with will and desire—the book is also a reconnaissance of loss; a confrontation with emptiness, death and disappearance; with the unchartable that lurks at the edges of what we know.

An exquisitely written and lovingly-rendered story, impressively researched and adroitly pitched for the concerns of a modern day audience, it is definitely worth the read. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, and the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and received glowing praise from critics. 

If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Better World Books £4.26

Follow the author @MaggieShipstead

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

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Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley 

A strange, quiet book, where the speculative elements are painted so lightly, you won’t realise you’re reading sci fi until you’ve been sucked into a story about love, family and community in a forgotten West Country village.

Jem runs a small rural Inn, serving brew to a smattering of locals alongside her immigrant partner, Isely; a love affair that seems both intensely intimate and frustratingly unconsummated. The community where they live, forms part of The Protectorate, a partitioned area of the UK that separated itself from the outside world in protest over the invasion of Qita, Isley’s home planet. The battle for Qita ended before it begun, won by humanity without a shot fired, a fact explained away by the pacifist nature of Qita’s people.

Jem lives a carefully compact existence; innkeeper, resentful sister to the local councillor, and estranged mother to a wayward son, until outsiders arrive to penetrate the studied calm.

The guide laughed at him. ‘Somebody told me that [Where to babies come from?] was the most difficult question you can human. Is that true? I heard you squeeze them out of yourselves, and cut them free. They do not decide to come free themselves!’

The book holds its cards close to its chest and although I was sucked in from the beginning, it wasn’t until the final quarter that I really sat up and realised I was reading something important. Expertly woven into a story about intimacy and independence, selfhood and community, are deeper questions about how and why we reach for each other, and what we might be prepared to sacrifice not to feel alone.

The novel was a finalist for the 2021 BSFA Award for Best Novel and Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as being named one of the five best science fiction novels of the year by the Financial Times. It has been monikered a ‘modern classic’, something which gets bandied around a lot, but that I think in this case is valid. This book is grappling with something timeless and vital, and doing it in a perfectly paced and plotted story that I believe will hold out against the test of time.

If you’ve read Skyward Inn, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £5.99 

Paperback from Awesome Books £6.05

Follow the author @AliyaWhiteley

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

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The long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers

This debut novel, originally self-published via a kickstarter campaign, has since become a critically acclaimed series, totalling four novels and a short story.

Unusual in its tone and pacing, the story follows the multi-species crew of The Wayfarer, a  tunnelling ship, contracted to build wormholes in space. Books in this genre usually focus on intergalactic politics, space exploration and battles, but this one centres itself on the day to day lives of its characters. It is a small and wholesome story, refreshingly cheerful—more a feel-good soap opera that happens to be set in space, than a traditional space opera.

“All you can do, Rosemary – all any of us can do – is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.”

The book meanders through a series of planetary stops and chance meetings which are designed to develop the characters and the world, rather than to push the plot forward. Key moments of tension simply happen, and then pass by, the repercussions reassuringly small scale, as the crew (and therefore the reader) get to know each other and their world a little better.

There are some lovely depictions of friendship and acceptance, and the alien species, with their physiognomical and cultural differences, are well conceived and crafted. The author makes full use of the opportunities she creates to muse on our earthly history and customs, with everything from nuclear families, war, property and gender, coming gently and generously under the microscope.

This is a great, easy read, with lovingly painted characters and plenty of heart, and as a bonus, if you like it, there’s four more to get stuck into.

As always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Awesome Books £4.59 

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometim

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She Became The Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

A young, peasant girl, starving to death in small village, is confronted with the stark ignominy of her fate: She is nothing and she will die nothing. The girl refuses. In a devastating act of will, she pitches herself into a new destiny, one that will upturn the boundaries of possibility and bring her into battle with heaven itself.

Set in 1300’s China, this epic story—much like its captivating heroine—does not concern itself with boundaries. The narrative is a re-imagining of the rise to power of the peasant rebel, Zhu Yuanzhang, who after claiming victory against the Mongols, reunited China and became the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The historical setting is rendered with loving attention to detail and the considered treatment of gender, catapults the story into the 21st century. In addition, the adroitly managed flavourings of Chinese myth and legend expound the fantastical elements of the story, helping to heighten the vertiginous scale of the narrative, extending it across the plains of China and out into the heavens and the spiritual realm of hungry ghosts.

For a moment she saw the two of them as Heaven might: two briefly embodied human spirits, brushing together for a moment during the long dark journey of their life and death… She Became The Sun

The book is absolutely dripping in honours and deserves them all. It won both the Best Novel and Best Newcomer awards at the British Fantasy Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, the Locus award, the Aurealis Award and the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

This is a massive, masterful book that you should definitely read. I absolutely loved it. Everything from the glimpse into ancient China, to the morally ambiguous but explosively alluring heroine, to the battles and the politics, the love stories and tragedies. It truly deserves the mantle of an epic, and spares the time to line up some emotional gut punches that will take your breath away. 

Already read it? Let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Abe Books £3.64

Follow the author on twitter @shelleypchan

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

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The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird 

There have been many pandemic books written since COVID, and this is one of them. Drawing on the themes of terror, political incompetence and social collapse, End of Men does something a little different with this device, using it to poke around in some ’what-ifs’ of current gender politics.

The concept is simple, a new deadly disease appears out of nowhere and rampages through the population, but it only affects men. Women can carry the disease, but only men die, and die they do in droves. The story is told from the perspectives of different women; politicians, medical professionals, researchers, journalists, daughters, mothers and wives, and it isn’t afraid to get it hands dirty with some pretty sharp-toothed social commentary.

“I have never felt so powerful. This must be what men used to feel like. My mere physical presence is enough to terrify someone into running.”

With the recent experiences of COVID still fresh in our minds, the stories cut close to the bone, giving heart-breaking accounts of loss and the terrifying inertia of being trapped indoors not knowing when, or if, it will ever be over. There are some compelling characters including ‘good’ men and ‘bad’ women to give balance, and for the most part, things tick along as you might expect them to. The book’s pace is solid and the world is extremely convincing, but there’s not much to surprise or many new insights to be gleaned, either about the role of women in society, or our handling of major health catastrophes.

All in all, a decent read, but nothing to get overly excited about. If you’re curious about the premise, it’s worth a look, and if you’re nostalgic for the gut-gripping terror that you might lose all your loved ones while trapped alone in quarantine, you’re in for a treat.

If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £5.49 

Paperback from World of books £4.79

Follow the author on twitter @ChristinaRoseSB

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A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine 

If you haven’t read, A Memory Called Empire, I strongly suggest you put it at the top of your reading list and line A Desolation Called Peace up next.

An ambassador from a small mining station is trying to avoid becoming political lunchmeat, when her handler—and one-time lover—from the heart of the Empire, arrives stowed away on a goods transport and demands her help. The mission is to make first contact with a vicious and incomprehensible alien civilisation, which is currently eating ships and wiping out whole planets on their doorstep.

Arkady Martine (pen name of academic and author, Anna Linden Weller), is one of the new queens of the space opera, and if you’re at all attracted by the idea of political intrigue played out over giant intergalactic empires, you will love this book. If you’re not, I’d seriously recommend putting any prejudices aside and giving it a go.

“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.” A Desolation Called Peace

I don’t like space ship sci-fi that puts the ‘sci’ before the ‘fi’, but this is a few hundred light years from that (sorry, no more space travel puns, I promise). Every single character in this vast, ambitious story, is delicious. They are fleshy and real and so seductive that you can’t wait to leave one to get back to another, but then are just as hungry to return. The themes of language and memory and ultimately what it means to be ‘a person’, are handled with sophistication, and the civilisation at the heart of the story is crafted with a loving attention to detail that is frankly intimidating.

This is a master storyteller at work, and the skill with which she draws together layer upon layer of complex narrative for the big finale, is orchestrated with the studied flair of a symphony conductor. The book will demand your time and attention, but it more than repays the effort. If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought in the comments. If you haven’t, I’m jealous! You’ve a treat in store.

As always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Waterstones £7.49

Follow the author on twitter @ArkadyMartine

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

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Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

It’s halloween, and watching from an upper window, Jen sees her son kill a man. Her loving teenage boy barely looks at her, as tight-lipped and apparently indifferent, he is cuffed and taken away.

At some point later that evening, shell-shocked and devastated, Jen falls asleep, and when she wakes, it is the day before halloween and the murder hasn’t happened yet.

Yet another time travelling detective novel (there must be something in the water), but this one is a little different. Instead of travelling in loop, Jen can only fall backwards, further and further into her family’s past, until the secrets hidden there—the ones that will drive her son to murder—can be dragged into the light and untethered from the family’s fate.

She suddenly thinks of Kelly. The easy humour they’ve always had. But when has Kelly ever told her how he felt? If she observes him dispassionately, what might she see? Wrong Place, Wrong Time

This is a family drama with a splash of crime fiction, and a speculative element that works well with the story being told. It is a smartly executed mystery, with plenty of enticing twists and shocking reveals, and a refreshing lack of gory horror. If you’re in the market for an easy-to-read crime thriller that isn’t going to put you off your dinner, I’d say this one is a good bet.

If you’ve already read it, let me know what you think in the comments and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £7.99 

Paperback from World of Books £4.49

Follow the author on twitter @GillianMAuthor

Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on what I’m reading.

Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime