Voyage of the Basilisk & In the Labyrinth of Drakes

Marie Brennan, 2015 & 2016

(August 2016)

I’ll refer you back to my previous comments about needing a bit of a breather after reading The Vegetarian, and what better way than with Marie Brennan’s Darwin genderswap mind candy? I mean, it’s a superior sort of mind candy, certainly, but it’s exactly the sort of world you can sink into without having to challenge yourself to analyse every detail, should you so wish. And I so wished.

Sorcerer to the Crown

Zen Cho, 2015

(October 2015)

  

Delightful. As with her short stories, Cho has a rare and unerring ability to do charming without tripping over into twee, and witty without falling into smug.

Jane Eyre & Wide Sargasso Sea

Charlotte Brontë, 1847

Jean Rhys, 1966

(May 2014)

Get me with the classics, such as they are. We’ve been watching clips from the BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre in class, and after banging on about how it’s the English equivalent of Kokoro (in so much as it’s often studied in school) I figured I may as well read the damn thing properly.