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Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn

(Warning: some minor spoilers)

Early one morning as our protagonist, Shiels, arrives at high school, students stand in awe as a creature in the sky flies towards them, crash landing on top of a student runner out on the pitch. As student body president Shiels heads over there to confront this… pterodactyl… this teenage boy pterodactyl, this interspecies transfer student pterodactyl (he has the paperwork).

Is this pterodactyl thing just a gimmick in this novel? Mostly Yes… but also a lot of No.

It’s a gimmick because you don’t really need it, it’s Shiels’ story, she hardly interacts with Pyke, the pterodactyl. It’s really more about her questioning who she is and what she wants, as her highly organised, overachieving teenage life meets the next step, university and her future, will she follow her carefully laid out plans or come undone so close to the end, come undone by rebellion, lust, and jealousy. This is a book about the power of attraction, of lust, of a desire to escape. It’s about being in a long term relationship with someone who really knows you and supports you and yet you’re seduced by the idea of the new bad boy in town. It’s about jealousy, wanting to be special, wanting to be acknowledged and recognized. 

Is the pterodactyl a gimmick? No. Why, because we have a tendency, we women especially, to be too hard on our female protagonists. A girl gets obsessed by the new popular kid everyone’s crazy about, gets jealous because he’s picked out a girl she thinks is less than her, risks her relationship with a long term loving and supportive boyfriend to fawn over a mysterious new guy she’s barely spoken to, well that’s an idiot move. A girl takes up responsibility for a guy’s bad behaviour because she thinks he doesn’t know any better and therefore everything is her fault. Girl come on. As a boy does silly tricks with cigarettes to impress a gang of guys while shirking off his football practice for laughs, to us the audience his lameness is obvious BUT make the new, popular, bad boy a pterodactyl, one whose origin is unknown, are there other pterodactyls in this world? We don’t know for sure, no others appear or are spoken about. Are pterodactyls normal or is Pyke a monster brainwashing everyone to see his presence as normal? Certainly everyone is entranced by him, moving and following him like a pack of birds together as one. When you make the silly bad boy into a potentially supernatural and magnetic presence, unknown to both the characters and the reader, then we are less likely to dismiss the teenage behaviours of those attracted to him as simply not knowing better. There are emotions we cannot control, especially when we are experiencing and learning about them for the first time.

There was one particular scene that I thought was well done, Pyke and his band (yeah of course the bad boy is in a band, the rest of the band are human, he’s the lead singer) play at the school dance, everybody gets crazy hypnotised by Pyke’s shrieking, the school hall turns almost into an orgy, Shiels gets up on the stage and has a dance with him that a little too intimate looking. The next day her nose has turned purple, the video of them dancing is all over the school’s social media and everyone is staring at her and judging her. No one has anything to say about Pyke’s participation in the dance or the fact that this is the second of “his” girls to develop a permanent purple nose. The allegory here is how society make a woman’s sexual life follows her, mark her, how after loosing one’s virginity women worry about whether people “can tell”. And it does not mark men in the same way.

So if you’re wanting some sort of really weird romance between a girl and pterodactyl, this is not it. If you want a novel about a high achieving teenager’s mental breakdown due to pressure, changing and raging hormones, identity crisis, and sudden, unstoppable desire to take up jogging, that is what this is. 

P.S Love this cover, the moment I saw it I knew I had to have it (I pick a lot of books based on their beautiful cover designs).

Review by Book Hamster

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The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

Set mostly in modern Buenos Aires, this is a collection of 12 gothic stories, disturbing and often horrific. They’re very short but poignant, focusing on the uglier qualities of human emotion; selfishness, greed, jealousy, apathy and so on, wrapped up in strange supernatural occurrences. I can admire them for the quality of the imagery conjured, but there is an ugliness to them that left me with an unpleasant feeling throughout. They’re like modern day fairytales for bitter adults who are disgusted with life. This blog is a little bit of a reading journal for me, and these reviews help me remember past books and what I felt about them, I was tempted to write up a brief description of each story to jog my memory in the future but in truth I don’t particularly want to revisit these tales.

P.S I love the cover. 

Review by Book Hamster

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A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I read this one in bits during the course of 2021/2022, it’s not the type of book you binge, it’s heavy with quality, quality of Toole’s use of language, quality in the many, many comedic scenes that follow one another, in its absurd and strangely endearing and enraging characters, who at the end tumble over each other with all storylines colliding. 

This novel first came to my attention when two male colleagues gushed over it at work, when I bought my copy the male bookstore clerk exclaimed “what a book!”. It definitely is a great book but some of the fame and awe also comes from the author’s tragic life and death. In 1969, at age 31 John Kennedy Toole was a teacher at a college in New Orleans, he lived with his mother, had written A Confederacy of Dunces which was rejected by every publisher he sent the manuscript to, he fell into depression and paranoia and committed suicide. After his death his mother tried hard to get his great novel published and finally succeeded in 1980, published to critical acclaim. We tend to romanticise stories of unappreciated, misunderstood geniuses that are only celebrated after their death. The take-away from this should be: while it’s nice, more than just nice, to receive acclaim from society and your peers, remember society’s tastes are fickle and tastes in art ever changing, when it comes to art, the artist needs to please and value themselves first. 

Is the book as great as everyone says? It didn’t inspire awe in me in the same way it seemed to for other people. The main character Ignatius is a hard man to like, a highly educated man but socially dense, (there’s some sort of autism there), dislikable because he’s lazy, selfish and pompous and wrecks havoc wherever he goes. I think he is a character that appeals more to men who might find the chaos amusing, speaking from my experience as a woman having been raised to be nice and polite and considerate of other people, for their feelings and needs, Ignatius’s awful behaviour doesn’t delight me in the same way but only serves to highlight my resentment at my, and other women’s, ingrained emotional and social responsibilities. 

The whole book is filled with an odd mix of characters, each with flaws and yet endearing qualities, this is indeed a confederacy of dunces, surprisingly a factor owner turned out to be the most likeable character. Set in New Orleans it is also a vivid portrait of the city and culture at various levels of society. It is a great novel, but not one for which I’m likely to place my hand on my heart and sigh “oh wow”.

P.S Love this cover. 

Review by Book Hamster

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Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen

The Little Mermaid (1989) is my favourite Disney film, I love mermaids. I also love seeing familiar stories told in new and unexpected ways, like Maleficent, Enchanted, The Lion King being based on Hamlet, Clueless being a modern take on Emma, and so on. So when Halle Bailey was announced as Ariel in the 2023 live action remake I naively thought we were getting a brand-new interpretation of The Little Mermaid, that they might lean in to a specific black culture and setting, like what Disney did for The Princess and the Frog, setting it in New Orleans and giving Tiana an identity and aspirations based on a real time, a real culture and a real community. Although side note it’s never sat well with me that the first black Disney Princess spends most of her time as a frog. 

With The Little Mermaid 2023 a Caribbean setting and culture would have worked wonderfully, ok yes the film is suggestive of being set somewhere in the Caribbean (although filmed in Italy) but fails to fully embrace the culture, passes up the opportunity to create brand-new music inspired by the amazing sounds of the Caribbean, and to have a predominantly black cast. The Caribbean is one possible setting given its wonderful beaches and Sebastian’s Jamaican accent but the film could be set in any number of countries (with a coastline), past or present, where there is a strong black community. At the end of the day these Disney remakes aren’t about real diversity, they are first and foremost about reusing past successes as an easy way to create new ones. 

When I picked up Skin of the Sea it was with the hope that it would become the story The Little Mermaid 2023 live-remake could have been. Unfortunately Skin of the Sea has its problems mostly to do with writing and in the end I didn’t love it enough to continue the story in book 2, Soul of the Deep. Here’s a break-down of the good and the bad. 

The Good:

-The novel does well in introducing West African culture, Yoruba religion, and mythological creatures. 

-Although it is set during the slavery period, and the topic of slavery is discussion properly and made part of the story, it is also very clear that the identities of the characters and community go beyond slavery, they have a long history, identity and wealth, and they are not defined by this moment in time. 

The Bad:

-The writing, some descriptions are clumsily written to the point that they make things confusing, the author also has a bad habit of repetition, one character was described as smelling of soap so often that it became a joke between me and my reading buddy, and the colour of the protagonist mermaid tail does not need to be described every time, especially towards the end when we’ve already read its description before.

-Pacing. It was quite hard to get started, but gets much better towards the end when characters aren’t just travelling from one place to another but finally actively participating in plot. At one point in the middle when the two main characters are going through the forest it felt like the author was including too many mythological creatures just to tick them off a checklist. I don’t know what happens in the second book, but my feeling is that the first needs a lot of editing, scenes cut but also a significant amount of writing cleaned up, and then along with the second book should be made into just one big epic book. Unfortunately we live in a time of YA trilogies and duologues, why sell one book when you can split it and sell two. 

Part of me was very tempted to get Soul of the Deep, because Skin of the Sea was 90% set on land and didn’t have much about underwater mermaid life. At the end of book one it’s suggested that book two picks up underwater, however if I didn’t enjoy the writing in book one, why read book two.

P.S I do like the book cover a lot though.

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn

WARNING: ALL THE SPOILERS RIGHT OFF THE BAT

I have between 20 to 30 books to review, some of which I read two or even three years ago, but I just finished Bitterthorn and felt the need to get my thoughts down while they were still fresh. Bitterthorn is about a young woman, named Mina, daughter of a Duke, unloved by her father, stepmother and stepsisters, sacrificed to a witch who takes a ‘companion’ back to her castle every 50 or so years, companions who are never seen again. The witch has been cursed to spin the threads of time, a person’s life (the companion’s) is sacrificed to be the material the witch spins. If she does not spin, time, and the world as we know it, unravels. 

THE GOOD:

Gothic Fairytale told in a 19th-century style - Imagery and Voice Bitterthorn is a cross between Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty, the magical side of the story is fairly simple like a classic fairytale with familiar elements: a witch, a teenager being cursed, a young woman sacrificed, a ‘princess’, multiple stepmothers, neglectful fathers, dead mother, a spinning wheel, an abandoned castle, secrets and bones and so on.

The novel is rich with imagery and symbolism:  -A dank and neglect ancient castle mirrors the witch’s true age and emotional and physical self-neglect.

-The witch’s dirty, neglected feet are a sign of self-inflicted pain, and Mina washing them is an act of kindness, love and obvious reference to Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.

-Bitterthorns, the prickly bushes that produces very bitter berries, at one time stop Mina from entering the castle but later the berries are harvested and made into jams symbolising taking a person or a relationship that is bitter and difficult and working to make it desirable / useful. 

-Mina’s vegetable and herb garden unknowingly being grown on top of graves reflect the circle of life as things grow off the back of death but also the danger and ugly secret history lurking in Mina’s perceived paradise as the castle has literal skeletons. 

-Links between time, threads, tapestries and spinning wheels, as well as descriptions of the witch’s changing fashion from different periods in history as an indication of the distortion of time.

And more.

As for how the novel has been written, apart from two or three moments, the voice feels authentic to 19th century novels, throughout the novel it is hinted that the characters are reading Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Women in White, Camilia (and others I might have missed), both the language and style the author has used as well as classic gothic moments feel true to that time: the castle being set on fire, a secret being locked away up above, the isolation of the protagonist all eco Jane Eyre. The neglectful, harmful family life and obsession with the outdoors and weather are very Withering Heights, and the bewitching female villain is Camilla (although I haven’t read Camilia yet, it’s currently in my To Read Bookcase). 

The theme of Loneliness and emotional neglect Loneliness is the main theme of Bitterthorn, the impact of loneliness, inflicted by others and also self-inflicted, and what one must actively do to banish it. It explored the harm from an emotionally neglectful family as well as others, and what steps we can take to break down the walls people put up, to reach them, to be there for them. But also to understand which people have the ability to reciprocate, and which can never give us what we desire/need. 

THE DEBATABLE:

The Mysteries I’m not someone who likes to guess the plot, I like to be surprised, I want a novel to give me more that I imagined, and that’s my main problem with Bitterthorn. The witch’s secrets are only revealed towards the end and by that time I had already vaguely guessed what the secrets could be: the witch does something in her tower that is related to time, and she must do it against her will because she seems very unhappy with her life, her ‘companions’ are somehow sacrificed. The nature of the secrets themselves aren’t the problem as they feel very true to fairytales, but it takes too long for them to be revealed, and when they are there isn’t much more to them. We find out the witch was cursed when she was a teenager by her stepmother. We discover she’s 400 years old, has never been able to find out much about the spinning wheel, has no idea how it came to be or who her stepmother was. She only discovered accidentally that a life must be sacrificed to create the material for the thread, and that’s it. 

Is Mina smart or dumb? Mina comes from a noble family and is fairly well educated, she has a personal interest in geology, reads scientific books and collects samples from nature. Now there is a difference between being academically smart and street smart, but, the witch’s secrets are fairly simple so how does she not discover them sooner? Especially when they directly affect her fate? The author’s solution was to create a bargain, Mina becomes so desperate for companionship that she and the witch make a deal: the witch will have her meals with Mina everyday as long as Mina promises not to pry into the witch’s business, this includes not snooping around certain parts of the castle or asking questions. What this creates is a character who is constantly asking questions in her head, constantly worried about the strange occurrences happening in the castle, worried for her life, and choosing, to an extent, ignorance and denial. It’s frustrating.

The romantic love story There are some issues with the love story between Mina and the witch, the first has to do with how isolated the author has made Mina. If we compare Mina to Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle has a loving father, she is desired by Gaston, the town’s people don’t understand her but aren’t unkind to her and recognise her beauty, the bookseller is fond of her, at the castle all the servants are nice to her and make her feel welcome. Mina’s father is distant (and sacrifices her to the witch to die, he’s well aware of this), her stepmother and sisters dislike her, the town’s people have no opinion of her at first, at the castle apart from one servant who actively dislikes her, the other servants are so insignificant most of them are barely named and do not interact with Mina. The town’s people near the castle avoid Mina because of her association with the witch, when she returns home the town’s people there also avoid her for the same reason. Twice she escapes the witch’s castle and returns home and both times her family rejects her presence, essentially forcing her to choose to return to the witch because she has no where else to go. She doesn’t even have any pen pals, with her interest in geology she could have reached out to other scientists or amateur geology enthusiasts when she mail ordered her samples or read articles written by these people, after all this is the age of writing letters and sharing ideas. 

The romance feels inevitable in a bad way because it feels like Mina has no other choice, and the book does acknowledge this. It’s a let’s-make-the-best-of-what-we-can situation, there’s some good in that, but it makes the romance less joyful to read about and root for. But what about physical attraction? Initially the witch is described as scary, imposing and powerful, I imagined a woman older than Mina, with an attitude that commands respect and obedience but is alluring and I hoped seductive (wasn’t). As the novel progresses she becomes more vulnerable, feels younger, at times seems like a teenager, moody and shy. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s essential for the discovering of the villain’s soft side, but there’s nothing of dark villain seduction between them, she’s more like a pitiful prisoner, if anything it’s Mina who romantically pursues the witch since the witch is trying not to get emotional attracted because she will have to sacrifice Mina to the wheel of time. 

The development of physical attraction feels lacklustre, especially since the novel is told in the first person from Mina’s perspective, so we have no idea of any internal struggles with desire the witch may be going through. Bitterthorn seems to fall under YA so there’s a limit to how sexually explicit it can be, that’s not necessarily a problem, but what scenes there are feel like they aren’t doing much -perhaps by this time I’d grown a little disinterested as I guessed the plot but the characters were still dragging their feet. One moment in particular took me out of the book, it was one of the few moments that didn’t feel authentic to a 19th century novel style of writing, I can’t find the exact quote but it was one sentence that said Mina was in her bed, was so turned on she masturbated, and “came immediately”. First off to read a 19th century character say they “came” seems too modern a term, but also before this we don’t know what Mina knows of sex, or sexual desire, or self pleasure, there’s longing sure, and longing glances, and talk of softness of skin and the heat of someone being near, all fine, but has Mina masturbated before? She must have, I mean she came “immediately” she says. Why am I making a big deal of this? Because she’s a 19th century character, a woman at a time when talk of sexuality was repressed, the scene can still be in the novel but as it stands that one, singular sentence gave me whiplash. 

POSSIBLE FIXES:

Make it shorter To keep the story as it is it should be shorter, Mina spends way too long in the castle questioning everything in her head but finding out nothing. Do we need her to escape, be rejected by her family, and return to the witch twice? No. Fairytales are simple and short, this needs to be shorter. 

Make it longer Make it longer with more complex storytelling, I was really sad that there was a time travel / time distortion element that wasn’t used in any clever way. There’s a door in the castle that leads to the witch’s study but the study as it was a week ago, it’s used significantly only once when Mina accidentally finds out that the witch received some bad news via a letter -not very exciting. There’s also a room to a perpetual winter, another to spring or summer, which are never used for anything. Also add the witch’s perspective, let’s hear her agony as she struggles between falling in love with Mina and her eternal duty to the wheel, let’s experience first hand the anguish of living with her past companions, shared experiences and guilt, teased in little flashbacks throughout the book, perhaps given the castle’s weirdness with time she stubbles into the past and meets a past companion. 

IN CONCLUSION:

Bitterthorn is a good period-style novel about loneliness, with good fairytale and gothic elements and symbolism. It isn’t a seductive, sexy story with intriguing mystery. 

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

The novel sets up an interesting “locked room” style murder, one in which a murder has occurred in a closed room with no clear indication of how the perpetrator came in or out. Visually this novel has a lot of cinematic elements; a traditional Japanese estate out in the countryside in the 1930s, a Katana stuck in the snow and the eerie music of a Koto instrument. Unfortunately I wasn’t a fan of the novel’s amateur detective, the scruffy and almost flippant Kosuke Kindaichi, or the story structure, opening with narration from a writer who has learnt of the Honjin Murders and decides to retell it with dialogue and reactions that clearly had to made up since there was no record of certain interactions. But what I disliked most was the irony: The Honjin Murders is essentially a book about misogyny, clear in it’s themes, with a good message, but written by an author who barely allows his female characters to speak, with most given so little personality they are nothing more than “the wife”, “the cook”, “the maid”. Sure this is a product of its time and of a certain culture, maybe it even does this intentionally, but I can never fall in love with a book that uses this as a character’s sole description: “As for his wife, Akiko, there was nothing particularly distinctive about her; she was just an ordinary woman, obedient to her husband.”

Review by Book Hamster

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Vampeerz: My Peer Vampires, Vol.1 by Akili

What a stunning cover, that’s why I bought this on impulse. On top of that I love vampire stories. ON TOP OF THAT I’m always on the lookout for decent lesbian manga. But even with years of watching anime and reading manga I still failed to recognise the junior high school uniform. For me the manga was ruined in the very first pages when the protagonist’s age is stated as fourteen, –a fourteen year-old’s sexual awakening is not something I, as a 30-something year old, want to read about, and while romantic vampire stories have always pirouetted around (and sometimes dismissed) the vast difference between the life experience and knowledge of a (minimum)100+ year old vampire and a significantly younger human, it is particularly egregious here with a vampire that is so old she is considered ANCIENT, paired with a human who is a child. Sure the author may say in the manga that this vampire has an “eternally youthful” personality, but the vampire’s deep, intense stares say otherwise.

Now at some point in the future I’ll be reviewing Classmates volumes 2 to 6 by Asumiko Nakamura, a story about two high school students falling in love, which means addressing the statement above about not being interested in a student’s sexual awakening-type stories, why it differs from Vampeerz, and how it fails in its own ways. 

Such a beautiful cover, what a shame.

Review by Book Hamster

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Alice in the Country of Hearts, volume 1 by Soumei Hoshino and Quinrose

The plot? A classic case of a girl who feels not special or unique, suddenly thrust into a world where everyone is crazy interested in her. Add Alice in Wonderland imagery, with guns and violence, and a lot of silliness. This one stays in my collection because the cover is so beautiful, but I’m not interested in buying any more volumes. 

Review by Book Hamster

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My Stepmother & Stepsisters Aren’t Wicked, volume 1 by Otsuji

I love stories that reimagine classic fairytales so I was drawn to this twist on a Cinderella-esque tale. A newly orphaned girl discovers that her stepmother and stepsisters are actually very sweet, caring people, despite their stern appearance and manner, and they are determined to make her feel loved and part of the family. It’s a funny and sweet book structured in short comedic scenes/chapters, unfortunately the lack of plot means that I’m not particularly interested in reading further volumes, but I’m glad I gave it a try.

Review by Book Hamster

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Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe Volumes 1 - 5

Oh god I’m hooked, I bought and read all 5 volumes over the course of a week! Oh where to start. I first learned about the Hades and Persephone myth a couple of years ago when it was mentioned in the TV series Harlots, a murdering aristocrat force feds pomegranates to a sex worker and calls her Persephone, they later share a genuine bond but it is ultimately doomed because… well he’s a murder. Over the years Greek mythology has come back into fashion, in particular with many YA and fantasy retellings, and the Hades and Persephone tale is one people adore, it’s the allure of a gloomy, scary king that turns out to be a softie. Before reading Lore Olympus, I had watched a show on Greek mythology, and was reading an old book I was given like a decade ago, retelling the myths for children, so I’m aware how the original myth goes in general; Hades kidnaps a young Persephone and takes her to the underworld, later she is rescued but she feels sympathy for Hades and agrees to spend half the year in the underworld and half the year above ground (she agrees but she is also forced to agree because she ate 6 pomegranate seeds and once you consume food from the underworld you must remain there. This myth explains why we have the seasons, in Autumn and Winter Persephone, the goddess of Spring is in the underworld.

When I heard about Lore Olympus it was on a YouTube video about society’s normalisation of older men with much, much longer women, and the reasons why such unbalanced, often abusive or controlling relationships are favoured by men and how the age gap portrayal in media excuses them. So not a great endorsement of Lore Olympus. I avoided getting it for a long time but still there was the allure, the promise of passion and melodrama, of gorgeous art and Greek mythology, in a seductive mix of modern and classical imagery. I picked it up in the bookshop several times, and put it back down again -the art looked promising but the layout of the book was awful. Now I’m a graphic designer so I care about these things, the comic was born as a webcomic and looking at volume 1 you could tell it wasn’t designed with a book layout in mind, the art was sparsely tossed across the pages. It was not good. So months went by and I resisted buying it. But in the end my desire for some romance with high emotion and angst won, and boy does it deliver. Within a week I’d consumed all published volumes, buying one at a time and devouring it and buying the next the following day. Happily the graphic design does get better from volume 2.

So here’s the good and the bad. The Age Difference, on one level this does not bother me because these are gods, in that old book I was reading about Greek myths I learnt that when the god Hermes was just a new born baby he escaped his cradle, stole Apollo’s cattle, sacrificed them to the gods, did some other stuff and then lied to Apollo when he came round accusing Hermes. The concept of age and knowledge and ability are not as we know them. The Greek myths were also OBSESSED with youth and beauty, so with the source material being already so problematic it isn’t a surprise that it bleeds through. However did the author NEED to make Persephone literally 19? She couldn’t just be a young women? The author went out of her way to specify that Persephone is 19, something that is so problematic that various characters and Hades himself acknowledges as being bad, he asks do you mean she’s 1919 years old? (Already a lot young than him if she were 1919 years old, him being thousands of years old) No?! Actually 19!?! I understand that the age difference is part of Lore Olympus’ appeal, the forbidden nature of it, but could her age have been left a little vague, perhaps even aged up a little? Because at the end of the day if we associate Persephone’s personality too much with her age… what happens to her and their relationship with Hades when she becomes older? Also the mention that her body will forever be that of a teenager is distasteful and sends the message that bodies older than teens are not desirable. I suppose since she is the goddess of Spring, to be forever youthful makes sense. 

On the good side, this series handles well difficult topics, it has examples of toxic relationships (not Persephone and Hades but Hades and a former lover) but shows why a person might fall into toxic behaviours, it also depicts well a case of rape and the victim blaming that follows, highlighting narcissistic personalities, and overbearing parents. The reason people love Hades and Persephone’s relationship in Lore Olympus is because they bring each other hope and joy in a world of both physical and emotional pain. 

Back to the bad, Persephone’s character is a bit of a problem, she’s the born sexy yesterday troupe, so young and naive but super overly sexualised, academically clever but clueless to the ways of the world. Of strong will… but easily led astray? Shown to struggle with prejudice but also given a lot of special treatment and privilege. That last point doesn’t bother me so much because at the end of the day the Greek gods were AWFUL people, they were forever throwing tantrums, meddling in the lives of humans, and causing havoc on a whim. The gods were the ultimate abusers of power and unpredictable moods. In that sense Lore Olympus is a good representation of the Greek gods, those guys were MESSY.

P.S Apologies that my photos have been so bad of late, my laptop died and my phone camera is really bad!

Review by Book Hamster

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Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman Book 2 in the Noughts and Crosses series

I read this one earlier in the year but I still remember vividly one of the novel’s main messages: when you are consumed by hatred, it not only harms others around you but also ruins your own life. In this book Jude comes close to feeling happy for the first time in a very long time, comes close to finding someone he actually connects with, but his racism, his anger, has been cemented “as part of who he is” and he won’t let go of it. Hatred consumes, and imprisons you, it stops you from developing, it fuels itself like a fire that won’t go out unless you put it out.

I have three more books from the series at home, I hope to read at least one a year, but after I finish the 5th I might not seek out the 6th, they are well written, easy and addictive to read - having little description and being all plot, however they are mainly focused on racism and tragedy, in a way that doesn’t seem to allow anything else in the character’s lives to exist.

Review by Book Hamster

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Don’t Be Cruel by Yonezou Nekota Volumes 8, 9, 10 and Plus+2

It’s been 4 years since I last read a volume of Don’t be Cruel, I think it’s one of those manga series I know I’ll wait to binge once I get started so I prefer to wait until multiple volumes have been released. I went through these four in about two weeks, slowed down only by having to order them online each time because my local bookshop didn’t stock them. Out of all the volumes what I enjoyed the most was seeing how Okino and Kutani’s relationship is developing in volume 10, in the future I’d love to see more of them and I’d really love to see a side love story involving Ruka.

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

To Strip the Flesh by Oto Toda

What attracted me to this manga was that it’s about a trans man, Chiaki, before and after his transition, it’s about his difficulty connecting with his father after the death of his mother, about trying to connect through a shared interest in hunting but being excluded because of gender. While there is tension between Chiaki and his father it is clear that there is also love and I appreciate that this story shows that even when there is love, understanding each other can be difficult and relationships are complex. Other themes are explored such as health and the importance of friendship.

I would have happily read a full volume of Chiaki’s story, or other stories about transitioning but unfortunately this volume is a collection of unrelated tales, some are a little bizarre or random, it feels like after To Strip the Flesh got attention the publisher tried to find whatever else Oto Toda had drawn to fill up the volume. Of these stories two make some sense to be included in this volume: one about a very strange thing that happens to a boy, which helps him understand the physical pain and overflowing emotion experienced by his mother when she gave birth to him… it involves a watermelon. The second story has something related to how we perceive body image and… I suppose the nature of love and devotion, I guess. A few of the stories are just one or two page comics, they’re fine but after the strength of the main story, To Strip the Flesh, most of everything else feels random. 

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki 

Volumes 1, 2 and 3

Oh my god I love this manga so much! I’ve often wanted to read more manga about lesbian relationships but unfortunately most in that genre are filled with high schoolers with very child-like faces and personalities, and enormous breasts, created to cater for a male audiences. I cannot fully express how happy I am to find a manga that features grown-up women who look like grown-up women and lead normal lives! This manga follows two neighbours who gradually start sharing meals and spending more time together. Volumes 1 and 2 are slow paced, I was starting to wonder if their romantic relationship was only ever going to be hinted at and stay vague and PG13, but volume 3 indicates that things will develop, now I don’t think anything will ever get particularly sexually explicit, it’s really not that kind of manga, it’s cute and sweet and wholesome -ok perhaps all three words mean the same thing- and while I don’t mind that, I don’t mind no smut at all but I do think that physical attraction needs to be acknowledged in a grown-up way, it can take several volumes to develop if necessary, and never show anything explicit but it’s still important to discuss, even if they end up being a sort of asexual couple, I don’t think that’ll be the case because an asexual character has already been introduced in volume 3.

The things I most appreciate about volumes 1 and 2 are: the illustrations of the multitude of micro-aggressions women face in day-to-day life, the way Nomoto admires Kasuga's huge appetite, the way the author draws women eating full on over and over again, I love how adorable Nomoto is -she’s my crush now, and I like that Kasuga has a larger body shape. 

Volume 3 is where the introduction of new characters really starts to broaden the book, we look at a character that has an eating disorder, and how healing it is for those around her to respect her and not force her to eat (side-note I got the impression this character might be non-binary but not sure, need to re-read it) and then there’s another character who does not cook at all, she lives and dies by the microwave -I feel so seen. Nomoto, our passionate cook, does not shame her in any way.

I’m really looking forward to reading more about this characters.

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

Warning: Spoilers

I’ve actually read a lot this year compared to previous years but while I’ve been reading I haven’t been reviewing, there’s a lot of catching-up to do and some of these reviews may be quite short. 

The Prince and the Dressmaker is a graphic novel I read last year, it’s set in Paris, probably mid to late 1800s, it follows a young prince that secretly enjoys wearing women’s clothes and the young, talented dressmaker he hires to secretly work for him. The art is gorgeous, especially the gowns, the themes are good, but personally I don’t particularly like Prince Sebastian much towards the end, Frances the dressmaker I get, she’s a poor artist trying to get opportunities to create work and earn recognition for it, while the nature of Prince Sebastian’s secret life means hers become secret too and at one point he actively prevents her from meeting a designer she idealises.

His situation is of course extremely difficult, unable to be who he truly is not only because of society’s expectations but also his position as royalty, however I personally find it hard to sympathise with someone that comes from so much privilege who is preventing a person from a much lower status from earning their way up, in order to preserve his way of life. 

Of course everything works out in the end, they have a romantic attraction which I don’t mind, it’s good to illustrate that a heterosexual man can have a desire to wear clothes traditionally considered to be feminine but this and his sexuality are different things. But on the other hand genuine friendships between straight men and women is also important, not every character of the opposite sex has to end up together, there is value in friendship. Overall this was a good read, but I didn’t fall in love with it.

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

My Wondering Warrior Existence by Nagata Kabi

Warning: Spoilers Trigger Warning: Mention of Sexual Abuse

When I saw the cover I freaked out: she (maybe ‘they’, the author’s not quite clear on this yet) couldn’t possibly be getting married, last I’d heard Nagata Kabi had written about recovering from alcoholism and had yet to have her first proper romantic relationship.

Turns out at the start of the manga Nagata had gone to a friend’s wedding and felt overwhelming joy at the general happiness of the event, leading her to want to experience the joy of a wedding, but without an actual marriage. Cue a specialist fake-wedding photo shoot, where you can hire a wedding dress and get your picture taken as a bride. Now for all of us more “clued in” we might think how silly, it is not a wedding dress or a party that creates that real feeling of happiness, the genuine feeling of love emitting from a couple and the pride their family feels. And yet how many of us are seduced by the glamour and dream-like nature of a wedding, ignoring relationship issues in favour of an opportunity to wear a wedding dress and have that ONE special day?

Perhaps a fake bride photo shoot isn’t silly at all, perhaps it’s genius, it’s genius for those that can separate their desire to wear a beautiful gown from those that have the main intention of legally cementing a relationship. Power to those that can see through the consumerist crap about romance and understand that what they are really finding attractive is the dress, the flowers, the engagement ring, the special day, and so on. Not the marriage, the everyday mundane relationship stuff.

Unfortunately, the author isn’t quite there in the understanding of all of the above, she starts off by believing that the photo shoot will bring similar happiness to that of a wedding with genuine love between the couple, friends and family, but it does not, then throughout the book she discovers that real love does exist, she thought it was all a collective illusion. A lot of confusion basically.

Now speaking from personal experience I have often wondered whether true romantic love really exists, and whether it can exist long-term, having no real examples of happy long relationships in my family, so like the author, who also comes from a family with unhappy couples, I can understand the questioning of the existence of real love. However while I’ve come to the conclusion that it can exist and long-term too, love simply takes many form throughout a couple’s life, Nagata Kabi on the other hand is still stuck on understanding that first stage of love, that intense attraction love. To her all the words of love songs, and love stories were assumed to be artificial.

There are other things I can identify with, like Nagata Kabi when I first set up an online dating profile in my early 20s, my profile was perhaps “too honest” in presenting my negative qualities, not to the extent that Nagata Kabi has gone to, but over the years I have seen a lot of profiles like that, of people who are insecure and feel the need to highlight everything that they feel is bad right at the start. It’s a sort of self-defence strategy; before you confront me with my failings, I’m going to list them all, and if you initial accept them then that’s resolved. Things aren’t like that, what we think as our worst failings are not necessarily what others are going to think are our worst faults. Nagata is taking a step forward in setting up an online dating profile, but taking two steps back by writing an overly negative profile of herself which she believes will discourage anyone from reaching out to her.

That’s point one. Point two is her surprise that people, lots of people did reply to her profile. Why? Because some people just want to get laid and don’t care if they like the other person or not. Because some people don’t really read the profiles and instead just send generic messages to everyone they come across. Because some people will read an insecure person’s profile and not take the issues seriously, imagining that the person is simply insecure, and with their help this insecure person will cheer right up. And lastly because some people do relate to what’s in the profile and genuinely think meeting up is worth a try.

The first third of the manga is relatable to me on a personal level. The second third is very sad to read, the author discusses being molested by a stranger as a child, and the attitudes of those around her that made her feel responsible for being a victim, in particular teachers using the assault year after year as a warning to other children, bringing it up in classrooms and assemblies. This is only described in about 5 pages but says a lot about it in a very straightforward way.

After that section there’s a lot of over-thinking about the nature of romantic relationships and the hurdles stopping the author from pursuing a relationship: lack of faith in people, trying to figure out what’s her type when she’s never really gone out with anyone, trying to figure out her gender, her sexual orientation and so on. While it’s good to think about these things, and this book will help a lot of like-minded people, thinking will only take you so far with certain things. For example 4 books after My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (published 2016, My Wandering Warrior Existence published 2020), the author is still not sure what her sexual orientation is, now of course everyone is figuring themselves out at different speeds, the author does not owe us an answer about her sexuality, but perhaps instead of more thinking it might be helpful for Nagata to meet different types of people, to interact with them, spend time with them, and through social experience help figure out what her type or types are.

I think a good, honest thing that the author has done is to dedicate a chapter to a letter a reader wrote to her, it explains attraction and love, and since these are concepts that the author herself is working to understand she’s decided to simply share what this reader wrote to her. A lot of what is explained of love and romantic relationships can seem like common sense to the majority of us, but I’m sure there are a lot of people, perhaps who are autistic, neurodivergent or lack experience, or are asexual or many other things that I don’t yet know about, that will really appreciate this book, the explanations, and identify with the author’s struggles.

The manga does end with a few points that even the most ‘with it’ person often fails to realize, such as you need to love yourself first before you’re able to love others, if you bully yourself you learn that behaviour and you may end up bullying other people, be it a partner or even children and friends.  

And then there’s the importance of children in a family, children bring joy to a family, as family members get older and grumpier, more disillusioned or tired with life, seeing children react with joy and wonder at all that is new to them can invigorate the mood of the family. As the author considers this and her guilt for not providing her parents with grandchildren I am grateful for her mother’s interjection: grandchildren don’t automatically fix everything. She gives an example of an acquaintance who doesn’t have a satisfying relationship with her grandson… and Nagata’s mother comments that a dog would be cuter than a grandchild. While that may seem shocking to some people, the thing to take away from that is that not every human is meant to be a parent, nor every parent makes a good grandparent.

The manga ends on a happy note, although to many it may seem like nothing much happened, and the revelations the author reached aren’t particularly special, and to me it did feel at the time like perhaps the book was written to stretch out the success of the previous books, but without much to say. It fares better on a second reading, for some of the reasons I’ve already discussed, it’s a good book and a comfort to those who find it difficult to understand love, relationships and attraction on a basic level, and it is a reminder to all of us that life is not lived out in the simple plot of a story, when an author writes something autobiographic we should not expect all issues to be neatly tied up, we should not expect for questions about the nature of love to automatically result in a marriage by the end of the book… or by the end of book 5.

Review by Book Hamster

[justfinishedreading]

A White Rose in Bloom, volume 2 by Asumiko Nakamura

After another volume I’m still not quite in love with these two as a couple, individually they are nice enough characters, Ruby in particular, and they have a nice friendship at present, but I don’t feel the attraction between them, although the author keeps telling me every young woman is madly in love with Steph, I’m like “meh”, I’m almost more interested in Ruby and Liz. I love Asumiko Nakamura’s art and after my first reading of volume 2 I was going to stick with the series and buy volume 3 when it comes out, but now I’m not so sure, surely I should have fallen in love with this love story by now? Or perhaps I’m being too harsh and now that the coldness between them has thawed perhaps things will start to warm up properly?

Review by Book Hamster