cyphomandra

I ploughed onward through FFVII Remake and ultimately platinumed it, woo hoo, although it’s definitely thanks to Optinoob’s combat guides. His strategy for the final Sephiroth boss fight (which comes after a series of other fights, so you have to manage your characters very carefully to have enough MP etc left) boiled to down to block, counter stance, block, with Cloud, switch briefly to another character once they show up for heals and barrier etc, then back to Cloud (as Sephiroth will instantly target the character you’re playing) and keep blocking/countering until you can get him with a limit break before he unkindly drops Meteor on you - Optinoob when describing this started imitating Sephiroth going “Cloud, why won’t you attack me?” :D

After that I played chunks of FFVII Intergrade (the Yuffie DLC) on hard mode and I haven’t finished it but I jumped back into FFVII Rebirth. I’m still on chapter 12 of this in hard mode, which is exactly where I was storywise in March, but I have now gone back and done all the side quests I’d missed earlier that you have to repeat on hard mode to unlock more character progression, as well as some of the mini games (aargh the mini games. There are too many and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get through some of them, like the pirate’s gallery shooting one and the gambit & gears hard mode games and, omg, the PIANO). Where I am now, though, I really need to unlock Götterdammerung to be able to make it through the next fights, and it’s locked behind a series of excessively tricky boss fights - the six Brutal Challenges. I have done four, again heavily relying on Optinooob, and they were painful slogs.

As a change of pace from repeated party wipes, I picked up Blue Prince, which is a puzzle-solving rogue-like centred around a mysterious mansion, and not only is it great but I have not yet died even once. You are the presumptive heir to the mansion, but to prove you deserve it, you have to find room 46 - the house is a 9 by 5 grid, every day you start in the entrance hall on the middle of the bottom row, and when you open a door you get a choice of possible floor plans to fill the next space - some of the rooms are dead ends, some have items or hints you need, some require specific resources to select them, some interact with other rooms, and some actively punish you by removing resources or limiting your subsequent choices. When I first got a PC, the game I totally fell for was Myst, a puzzle-solving world-building lore-heavy game with (for the time) amazing graphics, and I spent hours on it, not least because this was largely before the WWW and I had no easy way of finding out puzzle solutions. The creators of Blue Prince credit Cyan (who made Myst), and it brings back that same feeling - there’s a massive amount going on here, with intriguing hints of story as well as fantastic puzzles, and it’s very satisfying when something finally works. Last night I entered room 46 (on day 28 of game time) but there’s a surprising amount left to do! It is a terrible game for the “just one more day” because a day can be over in 20 minutes if you have bad luck drafting rooms or can take nearly two hours if you find a lot of stuff, and I also now have all these notes about hints and clues and possible solutions to pore over. Recommended.

Spent, Alison Bechdel
Rivals, Jilly Cooper
Appassionata, Jilly Cooper
All of us murderers, KJ Charles
Never flinch, Stephen King
One day everyone will have always been against this, Omar El Akkad
Unwritten rules, KD Casey

Spent, Alison Bechdel. Her latest memoir/fictionalised autobio, this one significantly more fictionalised than previous (or at least apparently more!) as the DTWOF cast show up as neighbours to the fictional version of Alison (whose personal memoir has become an HBO-like big budget TV show, Death and Taxidermy, that is starting to veer wildly from her original vision) and her pygmy goat-rearing imminently viral partner. I think Bechdel does a great job working in this odd liminal space of fiction and memoir, and it was great to see the DTWOF cast again; Sparrow and Stuart have never been my favourite couple, but I like what Bechdel does with their kid and the younger (now adult) generation. Also, the cats in this are fantastic. I would happily read anything Bechdel did about cats.

Rivals, Jilly Cooper. I was sorry to see she died, because I’ve always loved her books. Sure, after those first golden four (Riders, Rivals, Polo, Appassionata) there were some clunkers, but even in the very murky depths of Score! there were still some golden moments. Anyway. This is not my favourite because I do not like Rupert and I think Taggie could do far, far, better, but it still becomes totally compelling and I find myself strangely concerned about television franchises in the Home Counties. I should track down the TV series that was made of this recently (I should, but given my issues with ever watching TV I will probably not. Maybe if it's on a plane.)

All of us murderers, KJ Charles. Gothic (set almost entirely in Lackaday House, a great name), dodgy family, and murder. Zev is summonsed back to his estranged family only to discover that not only is his former lover, Gideon, now working there, but his cousin Wynn has decided that whichever potential heir marries his young ward will inherit everything; chaos and murder ensue, the house is cut-off by fog (it’s on the moors) and tension mounts. It is perhaps unfair to Charles that any books she writes set largely in a single country house will mainly make me pine wistfully for Think of England, and yet it’s unavoidable; this was okay but in no danger of displacing the earlier book’s hold on me. The writing for our modern sensibilities is a little too evident here (of course the evil ancestor made his pile in the slave trade and of course Zev would then totally repudiate it) , and after the initial set-up I really wanted more tension between the leads. But I still galloped through this.

Never flinch, Stephen King. Holly reluctantly takes up a job bodyguarding a controversial women’s rights figure; meanwhile, someone upset with the outcome of a recent (rigged) court case is killing innocents in the place of the misled jurors. This is entirely thriller, with no supernatural elements that I spotted, and while King is as always excellent on building tension, the book itself doesn’t really work. King says as much in his afterword, where Tabitha told him the first draft didn’t work, and he went back over and over, but was also working on it during hip issues and eventually decided it was good enough. It’s still a competent thriller but it does feel like it was set up for the (admittedly great!) moment where two separately motivated killers scrap over the same victim - the set up looks increasingly rickety the more you stare into it. I still like Holly, but I don’t think I’ll hang on to this one.

Appassionata, Jilly Cooper. I am much fonder of horses than of classical music but this and Polo are still my most favourite Coopers. Starts with Rupert and Taggie in Bogota, where they’ve gone to adopt a baby as Rupert’s too old for them to adopt in the UK (Rupert, still blindingly awful much of the time but once again I will grudgingly admit he has his moments (I think it’s in Rivals that he (as an MP) suddenly votes against the Tory party line on capital punishment and finds himself with all the liberals), is forced to help out at the orphanage to prove his parenting skills and falls for an abandoned disfigured boy that is not the sweetly pretty baby the nuns have picked out for them; they end up adopting both), and then cheerfully charges into the world of classical music via Abby Rosen, a highly strung American violinist who is being exploited and manipulated by her dodgy agent. Abby is also terrible - she’s impulsive, she fails to think about others’ feelings, she bullies people when she’s feeling insecure - but she is compelling and believable, talented, works incredibly hard most of the time (first as a violinist and then, due to events, as a conductor, fighting prejudice and rebellious musicians), and it’s impossible not to feel for her - and she’s only one of an expansive cast. Also has an m/m romance as one of the main three romantic arcs (featuring Marcus Campbell-Black, Rupert’s oldest son, a brilliant pianist, massively lacking in confidence and closeted, terrified that his father will disown him) but many, many more. She is great at having people be self-obsessed, even cruel, and yet also capable of compassion and growth. And I have no ability to assess Cooper’s writing about music but it genuinely makes me want to listen to the pieces her musicians perform in the hope I’ll share her emotional experience.

One day everyone will have always been against this, Omar El Akkad. Part memoir, part indictment of the West and its unobserved idealism, part witness; it’s good and I am glad I read it but it only made me feel worse about humanity.

Unwritten rules, KD Casey. Once again I bravely ford into the uncharted waters of m/m sports romances that are not about hockey. Second-chance baseball romance by someone who obviously loves baseball; this has a lot of good stuff in it (such as interesting, well-thought out characters, who actually feel like sports athletes - there’s good cultural representation, with one hearing impaired Jewish lead and one first gen Venezuelan) but the balance between their first relationship/breakup and the get back together felt too heavy on the past. I have got her other two on hold.

I forgot to put a divider between September and October in my highly technical & detailed booklog (an enote I stick titles in) so have just put half the books in each.

Horse trouble, Kristin Varner (graphic novel). 12 year old Kate loves horses and riding, but everything else - the mean girls at the stable, her concerns around puberty and body image, her brother’s creepy friends etc - isn’t going so well. And then she starts falling off her horse - is riding also not going to work out for her, or can she find a way through this? This is fine and I like the horse stuff but the rest of it is all a bit similar to other middle grade graphic novels I’ve read recently, which is probably the point but I need some variety.

The unlikely doctor: from gang life and prison to becoming a doctor at 56, Timoti Te Moke. I left in the subtitle because it provides a useful summary. Timoti spent the first six years of his life with loving grandparents - then his mother (and new, abusive, stepfather) took him back, and everything fell apart. Crime, state care, prison, gangs, here and in Australia - and then, in his 30s, he decides to take another path, and starts training as a paramedic, only to end up charged with manslaughter four months out from the end of his course. Timoti comes through as thoughtful, passionate, and surprisingly unresentful. There’s a ghostwriter credited, and they’ve done an excellent job, although it is a tiny bit annoying because it means there probably won’t be another book.

Can I steal you for a second, Jodi McAlister
Here for the right reasons, Jodi McAlister
Not here to make friends, Jodi McAlister

These are a trilogy set during the filming of a (fictional) Bachelor-style reality TV show, Marry Me Juliet, filming in Australia during the pandemic, written by an academic who specialises in romance fiction. I actually started with the second one because I picked it off the GLBTQ section of the local romance bookshop, and was quite some way into it before finally being baffled enough by the references to another couple to check - all three books do, however, cover the same time period (and only the middle one is same sex). Chronologically - in Here for the Right Reasons, Cece, an ex-foster kid who’s just lost her job, sees the show as her only possible chance- but then gets eliminated in the first episode. Due to lockdown, however, all the eliminated contestants are being kept on site, and Cece ends up spending time with Dylan, the show’s Romeo. He’s aware of her situation, and pitches a friendship arc to the show’s producers to get her more exposure - but are they able to stay friends, or do they want something more? Can I Steal You for a Second - Mandie signs up for the show to get over her toxic ex, but lies about that ex being female (she’s bi) to avoid the hassle that would go with being publicly out. And she’s doing well, but while she likes the show’s Romeo, it’s one of the other female contestants (also helpfully called Dylan) whom she’s really attracted to… Not Here to Make Friends has Lily Fireball, the season villain (she shoves Cece into a pond in the opening episode) revealed as a plant, and one with a complex history with Murray, the show runner - can they sort themselves out and save the show? I liked these while never being entirely swept away by any of the leads.

Heroines on horseback, Jane Badger. Nonfiction about the history of horse books, from the early books that were all about the horses themselves as characters (Black Beauty etc) through to the golden days of the Pullein-Thompsons et al and onwards. I have read quite a lot of horse books but do have some odd blind spots (I have never systematically tackled the Jill books and have only read the first three Jinnys despite really liking them) so it’s nice to catch up with some old faves and get nudged into trying some new. Badger is publishing horse books as well, and I’m currently dithering over acquiring a Caroline Akrill adult novel that sounds v Jilly Cooperish (Akrill has a really compelling style and a fondness for bonkers characters, but her het romance elements haven't worked for me, whereas Cooper’s often - suprisingly - do).

Katabasis, RF Kuang. I guess this is the Kuang I’ve least disliked so far? However this is partly because I consistently revise my expectations of her books downwards, so should not be perceived as an endorsement. Once again Kuang has an intriguing set up - Alice Law is at magical college, desperate to do well, but a mistake preparing a working for her exploitative genius professor kills him and leaves her in need of a supervisor’s endorsement, so she goes to Hell to get him back, helped/hindered by Peter, her rival for academic glories with a mysterious and frankly baffling secret - and falls apart on the execution. There are some nice moments in Hell and a secondary character (another academic) I quite liked, but meh.

What did you eat yesterday doujinshi 1-7, Fumi Yoshinaga. I don’t know why it never occurred to me earlier to look for these (there are more but they got ahead of where I am in the series). Explicit content for her more sedate series , which has always very firmly kept the bedroom door closed. I liked that Shiro and Kenji are not entirely sexually compatible (Shiro really wants to be more dominated while Kenji feels guilty for being too pushy/selfish) and that, as with the series, it’s a portrait of a relationship over time.

Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones (re-read). Sirius, a powerful luminary, is banished to Earth in the body of a dog after he is convicted of the death of another luminary, something he knows he didn’t do. He is almost killed immediately when someone sticks his litter of puppies into a sack and tosses them into the canal, but survives and is adopted by Kathleen, the unwanted Irish relation living with a family who range from indifferent to actively cruel after her father was imprisoned. As usual with DWJ I forget how bleak her endings are until I run head-on into them - this one, in particular, is painful because Sirius is mostly triumphant and only dimly aware that it isn’t the same for everyone else concerned.

What did I spend August doing instead of reading? Writing, mostly.

Play date, Alex Dahl. Elisa lets her daughter Lucia have a play date and spend the night with a new classmate - but Lucia isn’t returned in the morning, and when Elisa goes to the house where she dropped Lucia off, it’s a rental being cleaned out and there’s no trace of the people she met. Who has taken her? Why? Will they ever find her etc etc. I liked that this was set in Scandinavia but otherwise it’s pretty clunky and the twists are irritating.

Love in the afternoon, Lisa Kleypas. Cyrano de Bergerac style het historical romance. Quirky nature-loving Beatrix takes over writing back to the dashing soldier Christopher when her much sought after friend Prudence can’t be bothered - and, as war takes its toll on Christopher, the letters grow more intimate. He comes back intending to marry the woman he’s fallen in love with, but Prudence seems fonder of the decorated war hero than the man who wrote the letters… This was okay. I liked what Kleypas was doing with Christopher’s PTSD but it didn’t always mesh with the romance, and Beatrix is both super certain of herself and yet determined not to tell Christopher who she is. There’s a great dog in it, though.

Slugfest, Gordon Korman. Yash is a fantastic athlete but unfortunately the fact that his middle school has been sending him to play on high school teams comes back to bite him when he doesn’t have the state-mandated PE credit for 8th grade. He’s sent to the summer school PE program, which is nicknamed Slugfest because it’s usually populated by non athletic losers - can they all come together as a team? Multi pov, and a satisfying story with just enough surprise to keep things interesting. Not one of my all time Korman faves but I can see myself re-reading this sometime.

Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons. I went along to the first meeting of a local book group in a spirit of enquiry, which was serially dashed by a) the person who said she didn’t want to analyse books like we did at school and probably half an hour of book talk would be enough, after which we could talk about things like what Netflix series we are all watching b) the person who said she reads five books a week but ONLY real books not those e ones and only motorcycle club het romance, fostering stories and cosy mysteries c) the person who said she’s written a book, it’s amusing things her children have said interspersed with parenting tips and she’ll bring us all a copy next time d) everybody in their introductions except me saying they didn’t like sf/fantasy (we’d been told to bring a book we’d recently enjoyed and I was waving around my e copy of Black Water Sister) and e) the person who was telling one end of the table about how her teenage daughter had decided she was trans and now wouldn’t talk to her and how unreasonable this is.

Despite this really rather appalling start, there were two other people there I vaguely knew & liked, and one of them seemed to be capable of talking about books. One of the more organised people there came up with a choice of three possible books to read for each meeting, and although I missed the next one due to other commitments I decided rather belatedly to go back at least once more, which meant I ended up having an afternoon to read either Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, or Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster. I have largely avoided Faulkner apart from a few short stories and saw no reason to change this, so I borrowed the other two from the library and started on Tom Lake. I think Patchett is a great prose writer who writes books I don’t like - I was not wild about Commonwealth - and although I enjoyed the opening few chapters of the process of casting for a production of Our Town once I realised the book set up was going to be mother tells daughters about her past fling with now famous Hollywood actor I was almost entirely disengaged.

So I read Ellen Foster, which is about a poor white girl growing up in the American South in (probably) the 1970s, whose father is abusive, whose mother overdoses and dies, who has a Black friend (Starletta) to whom she is racist, etc, etc, etc, all told in non standard English. It’s readable and Ellen’s voice works well, and it isn’t as unrelentingly miserable as I’ve made out, but it ’s in a weird space book-wise where I’d probably rather either have a memoir or something explicitly fiction (as I’m typing this, what I really want to do is re-read the Tillerman series by Cynthia Voigt). One other person at the follow up meeting had read it and hadn’t loved it (two of them had read Tom Lake, the motorcycle foster cosy person hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave her comfort zone, another person was immured in Lucinda Riley’s Sister series, and everyone else cancelled at the last minute). Will I go again? Hmm.

Dear Yuletide writer,

I love Yuletide, as a challenge, a community and a tradition. I am thrilled to see what you come up with and I hope you enjoy creating it.

What I like hasn't changed much from previous years (including this sentence, its time come round again, slouching towards AO3 etc). I like humour that cares about the characters. I like characters who are outsiders in some way, but (sometimes even despite themselves!) become part of something larger - a relationship, a cause, a community. I like food as a way of showing character or worldbuilding (and for eating!). I like bittersweet endings. I like justified angst, pining, weirdness, and invention. I like pretty much any style of writing - epistolary, experimental, Dickensian - and even second person, if it works for the story. In a previous year I got IF for one story and that was fantastic. Artwise, I like quiet moments, possibly with tea or food, and prefer stylised to photorealistic. I love treats.

I have no problem with sexual content as long as it fits with the characters. I like stories that make me remember why I love the original inspiration as well as stories that make me think about it differently (and both! both is great). And I do like the canons themselves. I like these characters being part of their worlds, even when they struggle against them.

With my noms this year I am happy with crossovers (with other noms or any fandoms I've written). For AUs see specific fandoms. If you’re looking for short fandoms, either Dogsbody (one short book) or Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (one average movie) would suit.

DNWs: child or animal harm &/or death as a major plot point (outside of canon). If you’re looking back through old letters I have previously excluded earthquakes but it’s been over ten years and now I’m okay with them but would like them tagged. No noncanonical trans characters, please (exception for Jumanji - see below).

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Sheldon ("Shelly") Oberon
Jefferson (“Seaplane”) McDonough

I loved this so much, and it was so unexpected - I loved the van Allsburg book, really liked the Robin Williams film while being a bit disoriented about the undoing of the past, and went into this expecting it to be a bit of a let-down, and it was great. Everybody really leaned into the gaming aspects, NPC briefings, strengths/weaknesses, limited lives, and all, and this time the undoing of the past is actually heartbreaking in its consequence for Bethany as Shelly, and her/his relationship with Jefferson (I ship them in game but not in real life).

I've nominated the real world and game versions, but I'm much more interested in the experience in-game than in the real world. For this request I'd like to ignore The Next Level (although references to it welcome!), but apart from that, anything and everything goes. A sidequest within canon? AU where they don't make it past one of the challenges and have to find another way out? Another trip back into the game, just the two of them? Go wild.

I've put no non-canonical trans characters in my DNWs but for this fandom I am happy to have either/both (or anyone else) as trans.

Worrals series - WE Johns

Betty "Frecks" Lovell (Worrals Series - W. E. Johns)
Joan "Worrals" Worralson (Worrals Series - W. E. Johns)

So fantastic! So action-filled, with so many sudden reversals - and Worrals & Frecks are great, competent and brave, but never over-confident or perfect. I would love more adventures and I would also love femslash, h/c, spies, plane dogfights/crashes, coping with being in some form of wilderness after a plane crash, space AUs, or even just a quiet moment between the two of them in-between adventures. I like spies and betrayal and working with the Resistance, if you're looking for WWII themes, I would prefer the Nazis to not be massively emphasised and obviously I know that horrible things happened to British agents in reality but would prefer the narrow escapes and last-minute dashes of these books. I also love the plane bits and know almost nothing about planes so feel free to invent things.

I’ve read the first few non WWII ones (which unfortunately do have some terrible racial bits). I do have a slight preference for keeping the war setting BUT I am also totally up for leaping forward 10 years or more to see what the two of them are like. More spying? Test piloting? Involvement in the space program? Go for it. AUs of any kind fine as long as it's still them and there's danger and determination in bucketloads.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
Katia Grim
Princess Donut (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

I totally love this series, the world and the characters (I have read all seven books as well as listening to the audiobooks). Such a great concept, carried through with ruthless elan and with unexpected depths of feeling and insight. I love Carl, who is trying so hard despite everything being so stacked against him, and how he teeters between his goals and their costs. I love Princess Donut, who is very much a cat despite everything, and Katia, who has grown so much (ha!) during her time in the dungeon. I love the gamelit/RPG tropes (loot boxes! stat increases!) and the horror tropes and the pokes at reality TV. I love that everyone has their own agenda (look at Donut, running a revolution in her spare time) and I really, really love the way that Carl, even as he blows everything up and gets increasingly unstable, can listen to others, respect their opinions, and give them chances to make their own paths.

Prompts - go wild. Carl or Katia’s past, before they go into the dungeon? (Or Donut’s - what was she like as a kitten? What was her take on Carl when he first showed up?) A bit from Mordecai’s crawl? An outsider pov from a fan, an NPC, or another top ten crawler? Another convention appearance? An AU - feel free to design your own floor!! - or an outtake? What if, when they’d ended up in the Ghosts of Earth section, they’d been in a different area, or they’d lost their memories and thought they were back? What if they find themselves (apparently) outside the dungeon?

I do not ship any of the nominated characters - one of the things I like about DCC is that Carl hasn't had any sexual relationships since entering the dungeon. Canonical relationships (Katia/Bautista and I SUPPOSE Donut/Gravy Boat) are fine but I don't really want them to be the focus.

Feel free to play with formats. Please don't permanently kill any of the requested characters but otherwise darkness consistent with canon is fine. I am fine with gore. AUs - tbh you could probably do a terrifying coffee shop AU with this group and I would love it, as long as I still recognise the characters, but no American high school AUs, please.

Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones

Kathleen O’Brien
Sirius (Dogsbody)
Sol (Dogsbody)

I recently re-read this and it’s so good and so heart-breaking - DWJ is just the best at devastating endings, and this one, where Sirius hasn’t quite realised what his victory means, even while Kathleen struggles with yet another horrific loss, is still reverberating through me. I would love to read more. Does Kathleen meet Sirius again, or even end up becoming his companion - how, and what does that mean for her ties to Earth? What about Sol, who has previously avoided politics, and how do he and Earth feel about the loss of the Hunter? And Sirius, who has changed so much and come so far - what does he do now? And does he miss being a dog? I would be fine with canon AUs (perhaps a different bargain with the Wild Hunt) but am not looking for major setting/theme AUs, and it doesn’t have to end happily - but I do want more.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R Donaldson

Linden Avery

Linden Avery was hugely important to me in my teens, when there weren't a lot of adult females in sf/fantasy I could see myself in. I still love her as well as what the Second Chronicles do with portal fantasy, which was fascinating and heart-breaking all in one, while Thomas himself is much more of an ambivalent reading experience. I have read only the first two of the third and am not yet convinced by them.

I would like; more Linden! On Earth or visiting the Land, and I'm happy to ignore the third series or go AU from the second if you have a better idea. What if she’d gone to the Land first, instead of Covenant? What if someone from the Land comes to visit her world? I do like the third chronicles' idea of time-travelling within the Land's history, if you wanted to do that, and would love exploring more of the Land anyway. I also wonder how Linden reconciles her experiences with her everyday life on returning to our world, especially her healthsense given her job, and I'd like to see her finding some peace or happiness there, having healed from her past. I would also be interested to see Linden crossing into other fantasy worlds (for the Yuletide eligible, anything from Diana Wynne Jones or Piranesi).

I understand Covenant himself isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I haven't nominated him. I don't have strong feelings about him showing up or not; he is important to Linden, but not essential. I don’t mind either of the other nominated characters showing up; if you don't mind non-nominated, I have a weakness for Nom the Sandgorgon.

England series - KJ Charles

Archie Curtis (England series)
Daniel da Silva (England Series - KJC)
Fenella Carruth
Patricia Merton

My favourite KJC, and the one I am most likely to accidentally end up re-reading after just looking up one thing. I love everyone in these books (well, certainly all the nominated characters) - I love Archie’s reliability and Daniel’s spark, and Fenella’s well-concealed practical ruthlessness and Patricia’s determination. They’re all fantastic! I would be equally happy with slice of life or case fic, isolated country houses or London city life, supernatural AUs or inexplicably having everyone in space. I don’t want anyone to break up and I also don’t want any weddings, but otherwise I would be delighted by any and everything you can come up with.

Thanks so much!!

Everything that’s not Murderbot, as I also read all the rest of the extant Murderbot corpus this month. Favourites - All the Beauty in the World for new to me, Longshot for re-read, and Cat Man for manga/graphic novel.

Longshot, Dick Francis (re-read)
The Salt Path, Raynor Winn
The Wild Silence, Raynor Winn
Landlines, Raynor Winn
Bean There, Found You, Cameron Tate
A dim prognosis: our health system in crisis - and a doctor’s view on how to fix it, Ivor Popovitch
Bonds of brass, Emily Skrutskie
Invisible, Christina Diaz Gonzalez & Gabriela Epstein
Grave expectations, Alice Bell (re-read)
Turning 12, Kathryn Ormsbee & Molly Brooks
All the beauty in the world: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bingley
Cat Man, Parari
She loves to cook and she loves to eat, Sakaomi Yuzaki, v 5
My darling dreadful thing, Johanna van Veen

( Cut for length. )

I determinedly managed to get through the Master level of Astro Bot, and then after several hundred attempts got the Sephibot from the Megamix Mastery challenge, yay. To get Sephiroth you have to get through three challenges using the dog (which is like a rocket boost), the monkey (plays cymbals that change orientation/direction of various obstacles) and the chicken (launches you upwards), and what I particularly enjoyed was that once you’ve made it to the chicken bit, which is the final one, the bouncy fast-paced Astro Bot music starts to merge with One-Winged Angel, Sephiroth’s iconic theme :D Anyway, he is now mine! I then gritted my teeth and watched some YouTube playthroughs for help and FINALLY got the last two bots from the speed rounds (inflatable octopus my nemesis, I have at last successfully wrangled you) so have now 100%’d everything until more DLC comes out.

Played a bit more of Death Stranding, and I do like it, but it hasn’t really gripped me yet - it wants me to seek out another settlement, but then I keep getting local missions, and I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to level up first and there’s no apparent time tension. I therefore picked up Stardew Valley again, which is probably my worst game every for making me play “just one more day” and am now on summer in year 3, have finally managed to marry a villager (Elliot, who has conveniently added a library wing to my house, why no I am sure my character likes him for his personality) and unlock Qi’s challenges on Ginger Island.

And then I picked up FFVII Remake thinking vaguely about doing a hard mode play through, but couldn’t find that or chapter select as an option so have now played through most of 17 chapters all over again (there are only 18 chapters) and gosh I love everyone in this (almost; obviously I do not love Hojo or most of Shinra, including the Turks). I am significantly better at fighting now as well, although I forgot everyone’s level 2 limit break was locked behind their colosseum fights but you can only see the options for characters in your party, so Tifa and Barrett are still stuck on level 1 because I didn’t take them back there once I had them.

The sheer density of boss fights towards the end and the lack of ability to save in between phases is a pain. In chapter 17 I beat Jenova Lifebringer easily enough as a team battle (now that I know to take out the tentacles), fought Rufus and his blasted alien hound solo on the roof top (I can take out the dog easily enough but getting Rufus means you have to hit him with Braver when he reloads, and he is super fast and keeps shooting me so I end up running in circles around the roof top for AGES self-healing until I can make it work), and then went into a fight against the Arsenal (not the football team) with Barrett and Aerith that I lost in the second to last phase - so I left the game on pause to wrangle children, organise household etc and when I went back I had to fight Rufus and Darkstar all over again, arrgh.

I didn’t read much this month but What Did You Eat Yesterday is just delightful and I will happily wallow in it for days.

Copper script, KJ Charles
What did you eat yesterday, 5-21, Fumi Yoshinaga
Ordeal by innocence, Agatha Christie
The examiner, Janice Hallett
Artificial conditon, Martha Wells
Invisible boys, Holden Sheppard

Copper Script, KJ Charles. Post-WWI London, detective sergeant Aaron Fowler agrees to investigate someone who claims they can read people’s characters from their handwriting after his rather dodgy cousin is dumped by his fiancée on this evidence, and becomes hopelessly entangled with the graphologist, Wildsmith, as they fall in love and solve crimes. It’s perfectly competent but didn’t get me any deeper than superficial enjoyment at the progressive ticking off of plot and relationship beats. I wasn’t really in the mood for either a cop hero or graphology as for-real mindreading though.

What did you eat yesterday, 5-21. Fumi Yoshinaga. These have been stacking up on my shelves and I finally caught up with reading them all - I think 5-8 were re-reads and then it was all new. This slice-of-life domestic cooking manga follows closeted lawyer Shiro (who does most of the cooking and is obsessed with frugality with a side of fat-shaming, which didn’t bother me because it feels so internalised but other readers may differ) and his partner Kenji (cheerful gossipy hairdresser, gives great specific compliments on the food) and their social circle through in real time, so the characters start in their early forties and are now in their fifties. I just love the art and the observation and the food and the way Yoshinaga can do so much in just a few panels, and the fact that the time frame means that what conflicts and problems there are (such as Shiro’s parents allowing him to bring Kenji to one family New Year’s celebration but then telling him not to do it again) can play out over months or even years. It is definitely a different generation to She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, in terms of expectations and identity, as well as broader cultural referents like social media, but I love them both. I have made a few recipes from this series and they’ve all turned out well, as well. I keep meaning to track down the TV series but I usually only watch about one TV series per year and unexpectedly this year it seems to be The Pitt, so that will have to wait.

Ordeal by Innocence, Agatha Christie. I’m not sure if I’ve read this one before. A man able to provide the person convicted of murder with an impeccable alibi finally shows up two years after the crime. The convicted suspect is dead, and the family and friends remaining are not at all grateful for this new information - not least because it means that one of them is the killer. The concept is great and as usual it's a well-handled mystery, although does stack up the bodies a bit (my parents used to watch this Scottish police drama called Taggart when I was small, and it usually became easier to work out who'd done it with each episode as more and more suspects turned up dead).

The Examiner, Janice Hallett. Another in her series of found document murder mysteries (a series in terms of format, not recurring characters), this one follows a group of students in their year at a multimedia art master’s program; as they await the approval of the final external examiner, it becomes apparent that one of them may have been murdered. This is very readable and it has some nice moments, plus I enjoyed the art masters concept, but it gets less likely as it progresses, one of the twists felt a little mean-spirited and the final revelations more contrived than inevitable.

Artificial Condition, Martha Wells. Will end up reviewing with the other Murderbots.

Invisible Boys, Holden Sheppard. Gay male teens struggling with their sexuality in small town western Australia; nothing goes particularly well. It’s well done for what it is but the female characters are short-changed and the three male narrators can be hard to distinguish at times. Reinforces my desire to stay in cities.

Favourites for this month were Black Water Sister and The Library at Mount Char, plus for sheer prose quality A Diary without Dates.

A diary without dates, Enid Bagnold
The Lord of Stariel, AJ Lancaster
The library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins
Home truths, Charity Norman
Fast connection, Megan Erickson
The friend zone experiment, Zen Cho
Careless people, Sarah Wynn-Williams
A month in the country, JL Carr
Cat gamer 7, Water Nadatani
Dinosaurs sanctuary 6, Itaru Kinoshita
My year in the middle, Lila Quintero Weaver
The shots you take, Rachel Reid
A rake of his own, AJ Lancaster
The husband, Dean Koontz
All systems red, Martha Wells
The Venice hotel, Tess Woods
Life among the savages, Shirley Jackson (re-read)
Black water sister, Zen Cho
The song machine, John Seabrook
The body in the blitz, Robin Stevens

( I've stuck them under here rather than clutter up everyone's reading page. )

Favourite of the month was Runt, both book and film.

Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward.
Four thousand weeks, Oliver Burkeman
Old school, Gordon Korman
Game changer, Rachel Reid
Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore
Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows
Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima
Runt, Craig Silvey
Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky
The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison
Galatea, Madeleine Miller
Illegal contact, Santino Hassell
Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan
How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang

Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward. Wilder goes back to the Maine coast he spent his childhood at to write the story of him and his friends and a serial killer, one teenage summer. The memoir he originally started writing at college was stolen by his mysterious roommate and published as a fictional success - this is his chance to finally set the record straight. But who is telling the truth? Evocative writing, great setting and effectively creepy but I am picky about twists and in the end this piled on one too many and I lost touch with the characters.

Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals, Oliver Burkeman. Friendly pep-talk by the Guardian column writer about not maximising productivity and instead doing more with your life by embracing finitude. My sister loves this; I liked it but did feel it went on a bit.

Old school, Gordon Korman. Dexter has lived in his grandmother’s retirement community since he was six, and been cheerfully homeschooled by her and the other residents; suddenly he has to attend school. Desperate to leave, he nevertheless can’t help intervening when he sees a few things that need fixing… Rotating pov, community-building; it’s fun, not a top-tier Korman but still enjoyable.

Game changer, Amy Aislin. I see I wrote “sappy, no tension, I have concerns about food safety” but not the author, who turned out to be a bit tricky to track down as there’s also a het sports romance with a baker called The Game Changer and if you search for m/m hockey it’s all Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series. This one has a hockey player in his last year with a chance at the NHL who employs a hot personal assistant who is trying to get a fledgling cake jar business going and is desperate for cash. See previous comments plus add a bit about lack of professionalism in employer/employee relationships.

Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore. Girl from large poor family (father presumed dead in the war, am sure you can guess at least part of the ending) wins scholarship to prestigious school, whose pupils are largely appalled at the prospect of a scholarship girl from a council school. Moore is rather fond of action so this also involves a lot of hair-raising dashes through the fens, spies, floods etc, in addition to various japes at school. Joey makes a lot of mistakes, some of which ring truer than others (she overhears a cousin disdaining her presence and makes a rapid exit from her aunt’s house, intending to walk the six miles back to school and send a postcard later, rather than stay feeling unwanted) but her heart is obviously in the right place and she is also English (Joey starts the book in Scotland but this appears to be temporary), so she wastes no time in uncovering conspiracies, learning Morse, revealing spies etc. There is a cute Belgian refugée, an evil French-Swiss chemistry professor, and a bit where one of the teachers comes back to school after an illness and Joey remarks: “she might have died of that loathly ‘flu; lots of people have,” which actually struck me more than all the declarations of national pride.

Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows. RL and online identities collide - 13 year old Ingrid stands up to her dominating and exploitative “friend” Rachel, and is ostracised; at least she has her online BFF and fellow MMORPG player Lauren, and, following a wrong number text, a new online acquaintance, Traveler. But maybe Traveler is closer than she thinks… This is a solid portrayal of friendships and first crushes, on and off-line, and the tensions between them, and the fandom (Ingrid and Lauren have a favourite author, and get to meet her) and gaming bits are all well done.

Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima. Backstory for Tifa and Aerith. I like the Midgar slums bits for Tifa more than the Nibelheim bits (Barrett with baby Marlene!), and the Aerith half is less compelling when it tries to expand on what’s already shown in the game (Aerith’s trial in the Temple of the Ancients in the game is about 50x more powerful than anything here.

Runt, Craig Silvey. I saw the movie first and it’s one of those rare cases where both are excellent. The movie is a very faithful adaption of this story in which Annie, a farm girl in an Australian town where drought and an evil water baron have jeopardised everyone’s livelihoods, adopts Runt, a stray dog who turns out to have a startling talent for competitive agility. It’s funny and touching and satisfying; has an older lesbian get-together (Annie’s widowed gran and the retired indigenous Australian champion agility trainer).

Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Astronaut lost inside a wormhole maze on an alien artefact survives - somehow. Nicely compact creepiness with a Beowulf homage that reminds me once again that I have never read the original.

The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison. “Sherlock Holmes wingfic meets Jack the Ripper,” I’ve written, and unfortunately the angel bits feel as stuck on as the wings. I know Addison’s read a lot about the Ripper but most of this is retelling Sherlock Holmes classics with the supernatural shoehorned in. I liked her Watson slightly more than her Holmes, but the more that got revealed the more I found holes in the background worldbuilding.

Galatea, Madeleine Miller. Short story, really, of the “men are bad, especially in Greek myth,” genus, but I liked it and it didn’t irk me the way her The Song of Achilles did.

Illegal contact, Santino Hassell. I was looking for non hockey sports m/m and the author’s name seemed vaguely familiar, so I tried this. Then I checked afterwards and discovered where I’d seen the name was the disclosure that Santino Hassell, supposed bisexual former addict single father with cancer, was actually a Texas housewife who exploited gay teens, using their stories/texts etc in her fiction, and now I’m not even going to bother to review this.

Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan. Opinionated but reasonably thorough, although I think Cadogan loses patience more quickly when dealing with anything outside GO (girlsown) fiction. The book I most liked the sound of from this, Munition Mary (published 1918, girl joins WWI munition factory, I suspect she probably uncovers at least one German spy and saves someone heroically)

How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang. Middle grade autobiographical graphic novel (yup, I snitch these from my kids). Cindy, a keen artist, is not allowed to tell anyone her father has moved back to Taiwan from the US; then an unexpected trip back reveals why he left, and why her family is no longer perfect. Nicely done and good at managing emotions realistically (I was also relieved the secret wasn’t child abuse).

Most of these I’ve reviewed already. Favourites would be two re-reads, Rilla of Ingleside and The Honour of the House.

Ne’er Duke Well, Alexandra Vasti
Biggles and the Rescue Flight, WE Johns
Honour of the House, EM Channon (re-read)
The New Boy, Doreen Tovey (re-read)
Jack of St Virgil’s, Lillian M Pyke (re-read)
From Billabong to London, Mary Grant Bruce
Jim and Wally, Mary Grant Bruce (re-read)
Captain Jim, Mary Grant Bruce
The Cub, Ethel Turner (re-read)
Captain Cub, Ethel Turner
Brigid and the Cub, Ethel Turner
Wanted an English Girl, Dorothea Moore
The Blythes are Quoted, LM Montgomery
Rilla of Ingleside, LM Montgomery (re-read)

Ne’er Duke Well, Alexandra Vasti. A new but rather radical duke turns to a very proper debutante for advice on rehabilitating his reputation; sparks fly, etc etc, but she is also concealing a secret in that she runs a circulating library of erotic literature for women. Thrusts the characters at each other without doing the work of establishing the relationship and everyone seems at least a century too modern.

Biggles and the Rescue Flight, WE Johns. I did not put this with Biggles Flies East because it’s just not very good. Written significantly later, outside pov with a couple of keen schoolboys (who are basically interchangeable cardboard) who pretend to be in the RAF (it helps that they’ve been sneaking out of school every morning at 5am to get flying lessons at the nearby airfield, although it’s never clear how this is paid for) in order to get to France to rescue one of them’s older brother, missing presumed dead. Clunks along predictably.

Honour of the House, EM Channon, (re-read). Pauline tries her best to make an impact as a new girl and member of the least well-regarded house, but has to contend with the Kipples, an astonishingly non-contributory family. Fatima Kibble is a highly unusual character for a girls’ school story (she’s fat and not comic relief for a start, but she’s also smart, talented at poetry, and capable of perspective) and this remains a very satisfying read.

The New Boy, Doreen Tovey (re-read). I really must track down Cats in May one of these days, because I’ve never read it. Sometimes I just want to read about cats.

Jack of St Virgil’s, Lillian M Pyke (re-read). This was published in 1917 and does have some WWI references but they’re pretty slight and I didn’t include it in the talk. It has a rather ridiculous bit with a school boat race that apparently old boys all round the world, even at the Front, are totally invested in, otherwise pretty obvious.

From Billabong to London, Mary Grant Bruce
Jim and Wally, Mary Grant Bruce (re-read)
Captain Jim, Mary Grant Bruce

The Cub, Ethel Turner (re-read)
Captain Cub, Ethel Turner
Brigid and the Cub, Ethel Turner

Reviewed here.

Wanted an English Girl, Dorothea Moore

Reviewed here.

The Blythes are Quoted, LM Montgomery
Rilla of Ingleside, LM Montgomery (re-read)

Reviewed here.

I really keep meaning to review more books. Here's January's. Standouts for this month were The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Safe Passage, and the latest volume of Dinosaur Sanctuary; for re-reads, Biggles Flies East and Strawberries for Dessert.

Dinosaur sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara
The warm hands of ghosts, Katherine Arden
She loves to cook and she loves to eat 1, Sakaomi Yozaki
Goaltender interference, Ari Baran
Safe passage, Ida Cook
Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman
Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read)
I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca
Strawberries for dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read)
Fear, Hope and bread pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read)
The adventurous seven, Bessie Marchant
Migration, Steph Matuku
One perfect couple, Ruth Ware

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden. I thought this WWI ghost story was fabulous and my only note is that it could really have used more lesbians. But it starts with a bang (literally - the Halifax explosion) and it's strong on grief and being haunted and the overlooking of women in war.

Goaltender Interference, Ari Baran. Second chance hockey romance. Baran is super weak on actually having characters fall in love, and this is no exception. Good on character interiority, minimal on plot. I’m going to need a strong reason to pick up another Baran but Home Ice Advantage would be my rec if you're looking.

Safe Passage, Ida Cook. Ida & her sister Louise were two middle-class English sisters just embarking on their working lives as civil service typists and clerks in the 1930s when they become obsessed with opera. They bought the cheapest tickets they could to see opera in London, queuing for hours outside Covent Garden, and then spent two years saving up to see one of their favourite singers in New York. Their dedication brought them into contact with the singers and musicians themselves, who became their friends - and who, as WWII crept closer, asked them to help get as many Jewish refugees as possible out of Germany and Austria. Which they did. They would fly out on Friday night, meet refugees and organise paperwork (there were very restrictive rules on who could come to the UK and what support/sponsors/funding they needed to get there) over the weekend, fly back from a different port on the Sunday (often smuggling jewellery, so the refugees could have funds when they arrived - there’s a great bit where Ida pins this incredibly ostentatious diamond brooch to her faded cardigan, trusting that it will look like paste jewellery to any guards), and be back at work on Monday morning.

In addition to being dangerous, this cost far more than the sisters earned from their admin jobs - but in 1936 Ida published her first romance novel for the new Mills and Boon imprint, as Mary Burchell, and it did extremely well. She ended up publishing 112 romances, and, until WWII actually started and she and Louise had to stop, spent almost all her money saving refugees.

The book does have rather a lot of opera, which I don’t like at all, but I do like Ida’s enthusiasm and her everyday morality approach to what she and her sister do, and it’s also very readable (it's also published as The Bravest Voices.

Strawberries for Dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read). I still love this m/m uptight semi-closeted/openly camp romance a lot and I still find the sequel so annoyingly off-key (why? why include the father of one character as a pov and shove in a het romance plot line) but I read it anyway.

Fear, Hope and Bread Pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read). See above.

The Adventurous Seven, Bessie Marchant. Seven children head out to Australia to meet their absent father and clear him of the wrongdoing that exiled him, but without any other plan for meeting him other than sending an optimistic letter to his last known address. What could possibly go wrong? Marchant wrote a number of enthusiastically international books without ever actually leaving England, and it does show.

Migration, Steph Matuku. Oh, I really wanted to like this more. Far future sf YA with Aotearoa/te reo/tikanga embedded throughout; privileged Farah escapes her domineering mother by enrolling at a military training wānanga which matches intuitives (who can see short distances into the future) with fighters, the stakes ramp up, her talents become unreliable etc. I never quite got behind Farah and I did feel that the story needed more space than it had; there’s a lot going on and the ending should have packed more of a punch. I liked her Flight of the Fantail better.

I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca. In Poland, Max and Zena are forced into a ghetto; starving, they escape to the woods and end up in a safe camp with Jewish resistance fighters. Moderately nuanced.

Dinosaur Sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara. I continue to love this obsessively detailed dinosaur theme park manga and would recommend it to anyone with even the vaguest interest in dinosaurs (or species conservation).

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, v1, Sakaomi Yozaki. Slowburn lesbian get together via food. The first volume is having to get through all the set up, which weakens it somewhat, but the characters are great from the beginning.

One Perfect Couple, Ruth Ware. Post-doc Lydia's employment woes means she takes her would-be actor boyfriend Nick up on his bid to be on a reality TV show that strands five couples on a tropical island - things, obviously, go wrong. I liked Nick's elimination but everything else about this was all too obvious, and I'm over abusive relationships as a twist reveal (not involving the MC).

The last two were for the WWI in children's books talk:

Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman. One of four boys' adventure books published by the astonishingly prolific Westerman in 1919 (he published 24(!) during the war itself). I read two Westermans for the talk and they both have cardboard honorable lean tanned handsome leads who tend towards clunky banter and unfunny japes while performing heroic deeds with no actual tension, plus a lot of undigested patriotism. What I found most interesting about this one was the description of special RAF tests Derek has to pass to be able to fly - he has to lift a wooden cube with a tuning fork balanced on it up and down three times blindfolded without dropping the fork, walk a narrow plank (blindfolded again) and then hold a brimming wine glass while someone unexpectly fires a pistol next to his ear without spilling a drop. I haven't seen any mention of this elsewhere and I do wonder how real these were (Westerman actually ended up as a Flying Corps instructor of navigation in the last few months of the war, so maybe? Westerman despite all his many flaws does actually do some research - the other one of his I read was about the NZ rifles and had a surprising amount of reasonably accurate NZ stuff, although I am not really convinced that our brave heroes yelled, "I'm from Timaru, but I'm not timorous!" while advancing on enemy lines).

Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read). I read this in 2023 along with a bunch of other Biggles and failed to review it; it's fantastic and I love it a lot. Great hook, with an non - uniformed Biggles mistaken for a recently dishonorably discharged pilot at his club, and recruited as a spy, who takes on the job so he can be a double agent; also features the first appearance of Erich von Stalhein, Biggles' nemesis/life partner, who gets to be as equally capable and possibly even more devious than Biggles. Great action, great twists, a deeply enjoyable read. I do have more to say about WE Johns' books and how they portrayed WWI (unlike Westerman, he was writing after) but will post later.

Platinum'd Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and then took a break, although I have picked it up again to do a new game plus playthrough to get the other ending. I love the game and the world and the combat style, and I will play it again, but it's too soon to really sink myself back down into it. The new game plus also keeps all my team's final stats and builds, so I'm one-shotting most of the first and second act mobs, and some of the bosses, and while that's good for speed it means I'm not as involved as I was on the first playthrough. I think I just need more time.

I downloaded Balatro (poker rogue-like deck builder) as it was one of the free monthly games with my PS Plus membership, and then of course then discovered I also have it via Apple Arcade on my phone. I've played it for a bit and beat two decks on basic stakes using the same strategy, then put it down a bit, then accidentally got my nephew hooked on it and so started playing it again myself. I've done all the starting decks on white and the blue deck on red. I like it - it really does have amazing variety - and I am experimenting more with different strategies, but it's not something I throw myself into with reckless abandon.

I am still looking for another immersive game. I started playing Death Stranding, because the second one came out to good reviews but random internet commenters said I should do the first one first, and it is an oddly intriguing RPG/walking simulator - after an event that disrupts the boundaries between life and death, people live in isolated cities to protect them from horrific things that roam the land as well as timefall, a rain that vastly accelerates time in whatever living thing it touches. Sam, the protagonist, has bucketloads of trauma, a phobia about being touched, and important vulnerable relatives, and works as a Porter, taking shipments between settlements and helping them reconnect to the newly forming chiral network.

The stealth bits around enemies are terrifying - I got too close to one in the opening sequence and triggered a void-out, flooding the landscape with some sort of black liquid filled with things with tentacles - and in addition you have with you BB, a bridge baby, a fetus taken from a brain-dead mother that is attached to you and will signal enemies by crying when they get close. The countryside, when it's not trying to kill you, is great to walk through, and it also has very good music. The plot - hmm. It's a very cinematic style (when new characters show up they get credits, so I know I am not hallucinating that Guillermo del Toro wants to provide me with semi-helpful advice and shove me out in search of certain danger) and it's very atmospheric, and blends well with the gameplay, I'm just not convinced (yet) that it actually makes sense. Still. Clambering across rocky terrain, struggling to balance the body of my dead mother on my back and desperate to reach a crematorium to incinerate her before her corpse explodes is certainly compelling.

(and then Astro Bot put out more DLC, including a Cloud Strife bot! I determinedly played through all the DLC open levels to get him (and then bought him a Buster Sword so he can do his Omnislash animation) and then failed multiple times to get anywhere with the secret DLC level, which has a lurking Sephibot as the reward. I have got so frustrated doing this that I've actually now gone back and done all the other levels I was stuck on (including the horrendous Splashing Sprint - fight lava enemies with a water spraying duck - and To the Beat - everything is precisely timed except my reactions, woe - and am now trying to do the last core game level, the Great Master Challenge. I have managed to get two obstacles away from the end but it is a relentless nightmare of perfection.)

Rilla of Ingleside
The Blythes are Quoted

The first Anne book I ever read was Anne of Ingleside (largely because it was the only one my mother had, although I did also possess an uncanny childish talent for starting at the wrong end of serieses, cf being handed a clutch of five Chalet books including School (#1) and starting instead with Redheads (#52), and although I did eventually go back and read the earlier ones in a more conventional fashion, I read Rilla relatively early and have always found it a favourite. At the beginning Rilla overhears a comment in the beginning about the years between 15 and 19 being the best in a girl’s life - which, as well as being a bit depressing in general, for Rilla, born with the century, means that these are the years of the Great War. Rilla goes through a lot during the book - adopting a war orphan, falling in love, losing a brother - and she does grow up, but Montgomery keeps her recognisable and believable to the last (lisp). But it's not just Rilla - Susan Baker, the Blythe family's housekeeper, has also resolved to be a heroine despite not being young and pretty, and she does achieve this (and gets a more satisfactory romance resolution into the bargain).

Montgomery started writing the book in 1919, and it does an excellent job of taking her established characters through the war, drawing on her own experience but always making it feel distinct to her fictional as well as the historical truths. It is fixed on the Canadian Home Front experience, rather than actually going to the Front (as Bruce and Turner do), and it is dense with detail. It is also dense with patriotism - the sole pacifist character is vilified - but I do think it is a more nuanced and examined treatment than in Bruce. Walter is genuinely reluctant to go to war, and it is not all jovial banter in the trenches (hence Susan needing to add a nit comb to her sewn-up package to Jem) or steadfast heroines at home - it is clear how much those at home cannot ever forget the dangers. Montgomery was a fervent supporter of the war effort in the early years, with her diaries showing how deeply she felt every piece of news, but this shifted - her husband, a Presbyterian minister, actually had a breakdown over having encouraged the young men of his congregation to sign up and die or be horribly scarred.

The Blythes are Quoted was only published in full in 2009, but it was delivered to Montgomery’s publishers on the day of her death (quite likely a suicide) in 1942. It reworks a clutch of short stories published elsewhere in order to add Blythe references, and strings them together with snippets of the family, as well as poems allegedly written by either Anne or Walter and read out lout to everyone. It is bitter and bleak about both wars, the past and the one it’s written during, and Anne ends up saying that she is thankful that Walter did not come back, and that his sacrifice was futile. It features Walter’s war poem, The Piper, (which in addition to being anodyne and simplistic, does not include the “break faith” bits quoted in Rilla), but concludes with a poem apparently written by Walter the night before he died, from the pov of a soldier who has just joyfully killed an enemy “boy”.

Montgomery herself was terrified that her younger son would be conscripted (the older was rejected for poor eyesight) and die in the war; he did serve, in the Navy, but survived. The Blythes are Quoted is an odd book, in both its structure and its preoccupations, but I think it’s interesting that Montgomery returned to her old characters to work though her concerns. She’d published Anne of Ingleside in 1939 - a domestic, cosy book, with a far more secure Anne (and an alive, if foreshadowed, Walter), but one of the things that’s always struck me about that book is an interchange between Anne and one of her young daughters with a new obsessive friendship, who demands whether Anne knows what it’s like to be hungry, really hungry. Anne replies that she was, often, in the orphanage before she came to Green Gables, and that she doesn’t like to think of those days now. But Montgomery hasn’t let Anne - or herself - forget them, and maybe that’s why she tried to use them as a shield or a warning for the war horrors closing around her.

It's been all Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all the time. I've finished the game and am now XP-hunting post-game to get a character to level 99 (which will get me a trophy), and then I have to start a new game + to get the only other trophy I need for platinum, because I missed it in the prologue in my first playthrough. I've enjoyed it a lot! The gameplay is fantastic - the parry/dodge mechanic holds out the glimmering possibility that you can get through a battle totally undamaged once you know the right timing - and the character mechanics are also great, although I'm still struggling to master Sciel's. The story is gloomy and intriguing and very touching, and the voice acting is amazing.

Are there things I don't like? Hmm. I could have done with clearer signalling about when to do the finale versus explore the rest of the world, because I assumed I needed to beef up a bit and I ended up wildly overlevelled. All the bosses have cut scenes/new attack gimmicks when you reduce their HP by certain amounts, so if you one-shot them you miss out. I should have downgraded my damage but it's tricky - initially you're capped to 9999 max damage, then you lose the cap entirely (I think my highest damage so far is about 7 million), but if you're dealing with a boss who has 5 million HP it's pretty slow if you go back to 9999. There are no manual save files, which fits thematically but is occasionally super unhelpful. And then there's the platforming - I am not a natural platformer, there are some clipping/box issues anyway, but I did grit my teeth and do the Only Up Gestral minigame (in which you have to jump up/climb between bits of structures for AGES, and if you fall it's all over unless you manage to land on a lower bit) over and over again until I finally got it.

But the characters are fantastic. Maelle, especially, and Esquie, and Lune, and Verso, and Gustav, and on, and on. It looks amazing. I love the shrunken overworld (which reminds me of Fantasian's dioramas) and the French bits, and the music. I have many, many thoughts about the ending I got, all of which are spoilers, but I will definitely replay it.

I wrote two drabble treats for the Season of Drabbles Spring Round, both FFVII. I am working on at least three FFVII longer pieces and spinning my wheels a bit so it was helpful to actually finish something, omg - and I don't normally write this short! Also fun picking characters I haven't written before.

Gravity and Waggery (100 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024), Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)/Original Character(s)
Characters: Reno (Compilation of FFVII), Rude (Compilation of FFVII), Original Cat Character(s)
Additional Tags: Treat, Cats, cat hair is my favourite accessory
Summary:

Reno gets Rude a present.

Never Again (100 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Jenova & Tifa Lockhart
Characters: Tifa Lockhart, Jenova (Compilation of FFVII), Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Girl Power, Drabble, Treat
Summary:

What if Tifa's attack in the Nibelheim reactor ended differently?

Six - pop musical where Henry the Eighth’s wives finally get their say. I went in without knowing any of the songs and liked this a lot. It’s short (80 minutes), punchy, emotional, and although it’s also not remotely subtle, I was hooked as soon as they started playing a techno version of Greensleeves on the intro :D (the four on-stage musicians are, like the cast, all women/nonbinary). My favourite song was Catherine Howard’s All You Wanna Do, because I am a sucker for repetition showing how relationships twist over time, the things we seek out originally becoming the same things that harm us etc (see also my otherwise inexplicable fondness for Nickelback’s Figured You Out), but I also like Catherine of Aragorn’s Beyoncé-ish No Way and Anne Boleyn’s Don’t Lose Ur Head (Anne of Cleeves goes completely off-script with a song about how fabulous it is to be wealthy and single in her own palace, postdivorce, which was also great). The audience were super enthusiastic, with quite a few in costume, and it was at the Civic, which is always an excellent venue.

Murder on the Orient Express - sometimes I just want to see a solid theatrical production with a great set, and this thoroughly delivered. It’s a relatively recent adaptation and it cuts down the number of suspects to eight, as well as removing some of the red herrings and not requiring the audience to actually study the train compartment diagram they’ve put in the program (it does, however, keep that fantastic bit of stage/detective craft with the wire mesh from the hatbox and the mostly burned letter, which I’ve always loved). The costumes are fabulous, as is the set - although we attended a preview and they had to stop twice in the first act because the carriages weren’t moving as planned - and it’s stagey without falling over too far into mockery, and Poirot manages to convey clearly the between wars setting and his own concerns about how justice is best served. Rima Ti Wiata is incredible as the much-divorced American actress, but I also really liked Sophie Henderson as Countess Andreyni, with her accent falling apart as Poirot confronts her with her past.

There were a few changes that didn’t work for me, and these were all more the adaptation rather than the performances. At one point someone said it was three years since Daisy’s death, which may have been a mistake but if not is way too recent, and the timing of the snowdrift stopping the train versus the murder itself seemed off, and there’s a key bit in the Countess’ speech that isn’t followed up on in the denouement. But I enjoyed it. It’s directed by Shane Bosher, who used to be the artistic director of the Silo Theatre from 2001-2014, who consistently put on the sort of excellent modern theatre that is the other thing that I want to see and that there seems to be a dearth of in the city nowadays. The ATC's next production is the latest Roger Hall, which I would not go to if you paid me (I haven't seen it but I have disliked his plays for ages) - they do have a Mary Shelley piece coming out in August, tho', which I could be persuaded to try.

Finished Veilguard. Overall I enjoyed it but I don’t think I’ll play it again - there’s not enough grit there for me to want to try something different. I do think that having Solas as the main antagonist but then having you fight a completely different enemy for most of the game is a tricky set-up to pull off, and for me it felt more like stalling than a natural story development. I did however do all the sidequests etc and ended up platinuming the game as I only had to go back to unlock two altars and jump over a particular ledge.

Then I played The Outer Wilds, which I’d tried previously and given up on after dismally failing to pilot my spaceship. In some ways this is the total antithesis of Veilguard - in Veilguard you can do all the sidequests and pick the right dialogue options and unlock the secret ending and you save the world, yay!! In The Outer Wilds, you’re stuck in a 22 minute time loop, and the more you find out about what’s going on, the more you realise you can't "win". It is a fantastic game for evoking existential dread as well as having a lot of nerve-wracking game play - there was a bit where I was rapidly running out of oxygen while navigating a rapidly changing underground maze that was filling up with sand that managed to target a significant number of my personal terrifying scenarios - and haunting imagery. I am also now much better at piloting in zero gee but I still wouldn’t employ me to land anything expensive anytime soon. It was unnerving and frustrating and emotional, and I will go back to it (there’s a DLC but there are also other endings and things I didn’t find).

It is very much a puzzle game and it reminds me of playing Myst. However, I did use walkthroughs for bits of The Outer Wilds, because I am older and have less free time and also because the loop/gameplay mechanic meant it was often hard enough for me to get to the place where the puzzle was, whereas when I played Myst I was young and pre-children and I could leave my PC on an Age for months (in one case) before I finally solved the puzzle. I also ended up re-reading Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life while playing this for unrelated reasons, but actually it is very similar in feel.

I then played a tiny chunk of Stardew Valley because I haven’t seen all the new 1.6 update features (I play on mobile) and *then* I picked up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which is the new French turn-based RPG currently sweeping the internet, and it is indeed both very good and very French. You play as the members of Expedition 33, sent out to destroy a powerful malevolent being called the Paintress, who every year eradicates all people above a certain age, counting down from 100 (she has just killed off all the 34 year olds; you’re next). The combat has rhythm game elements and you can jump/dodge/parry during enemy attacks, but again timing is everything - successful dodges get you more actions and successful parries get a counter attack - and I’m enjoying it a lot. It looks great and it definitely feels French, from the city centre with all the memorial statues and the cafés with outside chairs and blackboards to the secret mini boss I have just defeated who is an evil mime (one of many!).

What I really want to do is either play a new Horizon game or a new FFVII game, and the world has yet to cater to my whims. (Horizon III Nemesis does have a trailer but no release date, and part 3 of FFVII is another two years away at least). In the meantime I am doing a hard mode playthrough of FFVII Rebirth, which is indeed hard (no items for healing, tougher enemies etc). I’m up to chapter 12 and I can actually feel myself getting better at playing it - especially blocking, which in most fighting games I neglect in favour of stuffing myself with food/healing items to regain HP - and I do love everybody in the game. Do I love them enough to attempt platinum? Hmm. It is less a question of my undying affection and more my doubt in my ability to conquer ALL of the minigames. I am still traumatised by the piano and I have yet to get better than a B on Two Legs, plus I am avoiding that Shinra Party Animal sidequest at the Saucer that is All Minigames.

For contrast, I then played through Thank Goodness You’re Here!, which is a totally barmy surrealist dark comedy where you play as a (literally) tiny junior salesman, sent to the northern English town of Barnsworth to solve all their problems. It is disturbingly brilliant and very funny (and very, very, localised). Then I played The Stanley Parable, which is also disturbingly brilliant and about agency in gaming, and then I decided to go for something slightly less disturbing and played Astro Bot.

This cheerful platformer won GOTY last year and it is, indeed, fantastically well-designed (the haptic feedback is incredible) and a lot of fun to play. You are a tiny Sony bot who has crashlanded on a planet with your damaged PS5 spaceship, and you need to gather up your scattered bot colleagues from various other worlds and repair your spaceship. It is a love letter to Sony games, with bots and souvenirs taken from their extensive back catalogue. After each system boss, you get a world based on a franchise (Uncharted, God of War etc) and the last one I unlocked was Horizon, where I play as an AloyBot with bow & arrows, clambering up a Tallneck, zooming through cauldrons, and battling giant robots, with intermittent clusters of focal ghosts and even what I think is a skeletal bot Sobeck on a bench with flowers at the end.

I am not a natural platformer but I played this determinedly until I had the 300 bots needed to get all the achievements. I still have three levels I haven’t done in the main game (there are speed levels coming out as DLC), but they are unforgiving ones where you have to get every single move right, with no checkpoints, and the amount of actual enjoyment I get out of them diminishes. But it’s such an easy game to pick up, and so enjoyable.

I had planned to replay Horizon Forbidden West after that (especially due to the AloyBot!) but then Playstation Plus put out Dragon Age: The Veilguard as their March free game. This is a game that was in development for a long time, initially intended as a multiplayer before switching to solo RPG, and it’s been hit heavily by culture warriors on release aggrieved mainly by the nonbinary companion and the character customiser, all of which makes it a little difficult to judge. And my background with the series is patchy; I played Origins once and liked it a lot, despite feeling burnt out on conventional western fantasy (Mass Effect was more appealing on that front), I played DAII for a bit (maybe until the first major timeskip?) and then put it down for too long, and then I played quite a bit of Inquisition but could not get the hang of the combat when it came to fighting bosses and left it unfinished.

I am now in the final few act of Veilguard and I do like it but it definitely has issues. ( Discussion, no major plot spoilers but includes details of character selection and companions. )

I do think it's taken an unfair battering online, but I don't think I'm going to do much with it once I finish other than look up all the possible endings. It does make me want to go back and finish one of the others, though.

Joining the throng! I'm really enjoying what people have picked. My list is here.

For mine, I restricted it to novels (no manga, no fanfic, no comics, no picture books, no poetry, no short stories, no plays, no non fiction etc etc) and one book per author. Observant readers will notice that I've therefore decided My Family and Other Animals is fiction rather than memoir and I've also snuck in a 3 in 1 omnibus for Dragonlance Legends because that's how I read them. I had to add 8 books that weren't in the database and one of them is so obscure that I can't find an image of it on the internet, so I had to add my own photo (which isn't great; the dustjacket is long gone and the title is imprinted and not inked, so hard to read at the best of times).

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cyphomandra

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