The Vilage Village, Lemony Snicket

Book Title: The Vile Village

Author: Lemony Snicket

Series: A Series of Unfortunate Events #7

Date Started: January 6th  2026

Date Completed: January 8th 2026

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I’m continuing my adventures of completing childhood and teen series; A Series of Unfortunate Events is truly a classic for my generation, and I’ve enjoyed their screen adaptations so I’m determined to finish the books eventually. They’re such quick and easy reads at this point they almost feel like heavily-written graphic novels.

I do admire the way the writing is always introducing reasonably big words and concepts, but does it in such an accessible way, as if the narrator is having a conversation with someone they truly respect. A key theme is the ongoing patronising of children’s intelligence and emotions, but it’s so well balanced with introducing all of this vocabulary and culture plainly and for fun.

This isn’t one of the standouts of the series, and feels quite a bit shorter in its arc, but still perfectly enjoyable to follow along the Baudelaire siblings a little further. Despite having watched the TV series, a fair part of the mystery is lost in my memory so the puzzle solving is definitely still satisfying. Halfway through the series now!

Owl King, Bex Hogan

Book Title: Owl King

Author: Bex Hogan

Series: Faery Realm #2

Date Started: December 17th  2025

Date Completed: December 21st 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Two Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Two Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Around this time last year, I read two books next to each other with Nettle in the title. One was great (Nettle and Bone, turns out), the other was meh. I mistakenly thought this was the sequel to the first, but it was the latter. Oops.

I think overall, I found it unsatisfying as it felt like a children's book (but with a more mature world?). There is charm in the 1001 Nights structure (though it misses the opportunity to truly expand the worldbuilding within it), but the pacing is all over the place. I read Owl King in four sittings, and while the adventure isn't that expansive, an awful lot is going on that I had to remind myself of between readings. There's also a significant role by the first book's protagonist, Nettle, but frankly all of it was lost on me because I have no memory of the actual events of the first one.

My primary resistance to this book itself (rather than just being confused) was the romance and portrayal of abuse, especially as it's a novel intended for younger readers. The titular Owl King is the well-trodden tyrant who takes multiple wives after the last one mysteriously perishes - but worry not, our protagonist's sister will be forced to marry him and, wait for it, fix him of course! I'm being hyperbolic, but 'the magic was too strong' is an awfully convenient excuse for a supposedly reformed serial killer of women to revert to their old ways. However much the plotline may be 'tied up' by the end doesn't relieve the uncomfortable feeling that sat with me through most of the book.

I'm not sure when it happened but the 'save my sister' storyline needs to go into the YA cliche canon. It has very little room for anything other than repetition and seems to just excuse any life-threatening or impossible tasks completely out of its own stakes. I do appreciate the genre's evolution beyond true love's devotion, but I think we've hit another rut - or maybe we just need to be more creative with the concept? Either way, it's another one for the cliche list.

The Ersatz Elevator, Lemony Snicket

Book Title: The Ersatz Elevator

Author: Lemony Snicket

Series: A Series of Unfortunate Events #6

Date Started: December 12th  2024

Date Completed: December 15th 2024

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

A Series of Unfortunate Events were such classics in my childhood - everyone read them and loved them. I only got halfway through them (despite having the box set) because they started to get repetitive, but the Netflix adaptation has given me confidence that things get shaken up. So, as I continue my mission to finish the various incomplete series from my childhood and early teens, now is the time.

I really appreciate how fun and clever these stories are as an adult, as well as how fantastic it is to see children's protagonists celebrated as clever and brave and inventive - while the adults around them are largely unwilling to commit to facing the unfortunate events that befall the Baudelaire orphans. It's reminded me that most of my most beloved childhood books similarly celebrated kids who were clever and curious, who tried hard even when no one else would, and who knew that the relationships with those around them was the most precious thing they had. There should be more children's fiction that tackles dark and scary things like that.

Plot-wise, I vaguely remember all the mysteries from the Netflix series (though I'd have to look up V.F.D. again), but it's fun to see them in original form. I definitely feel like Lemony Snicket is partially to blame for the modern idea of click-baiting though. The bizarre elements - while still truly bizarre even now - do work impressively well with the quirks of the narrator. This was a very special type of series, and I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Nettle, Bex Hogan

Book Title: Nettle

Author: Bex Hogan

Date Started: November 16th 2024

Date Completed: November 17th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I'm on a bit of a readathon-style mission to review a bunch of NetGalley ARCs before the end of the year, and I'm pleasantly surprised to say it's made finding books like this one really enjoyable. Nettle took a couple of chapters for me to buy into the narration style, but once it got going I found it really fun.

This novel takes all those classic fragments of faerie stories and combines them into an exciting and alluring adventure. It does justice to those elements with the prose heightening everything to their full, magical potential, exploring the human side to being enchanted to dance forever, being tricked into eating faerie food, and finding the loopholes to solve impossible tasks.

While I spotted the twist right from the beginning (it's not particularly subtle), the way the plot threads were tied up was massively satisfying even if you've seen it coming for 200 pages. I would call this a children's book above YA honestly, and I would've adored it as a pre-teen as an introduction to this sub-genre.

The Colour of Revenge, Cornelia Funke

Book Title: The Colour of Revenge

Author: Cornelia Funke

Series: Inkheart #4

Date Started: October 12th  2024

Date Completed: October 27th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Inkheart was always special in a way so few stories achieved - who could possibly top the idea that reading aloud could make the story real? That you could speak your most beloved, most feared, most magical characters, objects, worlds into being? It's so simple, as most good stories are, and I was not alone in being entirely enraptured by it as a child (made all the more precious because my mum read the whole thing to me at the time, too).

But, as much as I loved Mortimer, aspired to be Elinor, and felt very much like Meggie, who didn't really want to see the mythic heroes from the ink world on a true adventure of their own? Who didn't want to meet the Motley Folk, escape danger with the Black Prince, witness the Fire-Dancer's mastery of the flames? There were flickers of it in the original trilogy, but our wish is granted fully here and now. The Colour of Revenges is so immediately immersive - the prose, the imagination, the characters painting you into the story within mere moments and fragments of paragraphs - that the idea that you could speak aloud these characters and they would become real feels just as true as the first time I read about a battered book called Inkheart and the world inside of it.

I feel ambivalent about the continuation of beloved series - I do like letting a story be over at the original destination but, at this point, so many of them have done it and brought with them lovely new stories. There's a moment, towards the end of this book, where two of our most beloved heroes about about stories; where new ones start and old ones end. Literal or philosophical, it's something that could be a materialistic meta media moment it not spoken with feeling. But the enchanted inweave of Inkheart only ever speaks with feeling, even when she speaks through her characters; "In my experience, the story never ends. Only the heroes change."

Blue Door Venture, Pamela Brown

Book Title: Blue Door Venture

Author: Pamela Brown

Series: Blue Door #4

Date Started: June 30th  2024

Date Completed: July 25th 2024

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

My saga of finishing off childhood book series continues, this time with a classical and beloved one: the Blue Door Theatre books. These stories, like Ballet Shoes and Malory Towers, sustained me as a child on magical dreams of the theatre and performance. It was a joy to revisit the world - and poetically at a time when I had finally been able to fund a creative passion project with a team of wonderful people; arguably the thing these stories had persuaded me to do all those years ago.

I loved the road-trip mystery plotline, it felt fresh from what I remembered of the series. Touring around all these places in the UK, many of them now familiar to me, as the characters discovered them for the first time was a lot of fun - and of course incredibly wholesome. As with a lot of old-fashioned ensembles, the characters blur a bit and end up divided into the boys and the girls. But Brown has such a respect for all kinds of hard work that the relationships and drive of the friends and siblings felt genuine and inclusive. For a book from the 40s, it holds up impressively well.

While it was a shorter story in the series, I massively enjoyed reading it. I can't believe there's only one left (she says after not reading this book for a decade) - and with Maddy, the only real protagonist, no less.

The Phoenix and the Firebird, Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford

Book Title: The Phoenix and the Firebird

Author: Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford

Date Started: June 15th  2024

Date Completed: June 23rd 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Historical

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

The Phoenix and the Firebird is charming, enjoyable and good fun. A welcome addition to the pantheon of children's fantasy, it weaves traditional storytelling from Russia (our protagonist's homeland) and China (where the story is set).

While the inspiration is directly explored through various mythical creatures from Chinese and Russian folktales, I wouldn't say the cultural identity was necessarily pivotal in these story elements; they could just as well have been any other fantastical creature or even completely new inventions and have served the same purpose. It also felt like we learn a lot more about Russian myth than we do about Chinese. It was a shame that the unique roots and meanings of the creatures were lost in the action, but didn't take away from the fun of the story.

The modern narration style often found in contemporary children's books (and Young Adult) never fails to ruin the immersion of a period setting. This book does well for the most part of balancing the stakes and threat with an appropriate sense of danger and security. It was only towards the final act when Lucy faced the villain that things just felt a bit too silly to buy into. At the moments when real, genuine danger and fear came into play, the book decides to fall into nursery rhyme rather than accessibly deal with the subject matter.

House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones

Book Title: House of Many Ways

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Series: Howl #3

Date Started: January 12th 2024

Date Completed: January 18th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

My personal goal for this year is to finish a bunch of book (and TV) series before I start any more, including some that have been waiting since childhood. Diana Wynne Jones' classics were of course introduced to me by the Ghibli adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle, though you can see her works' influence across so many more films than just that (the little magical dog Waif must have influenced Heen in Miyazaki's Howl).

Overall, this is a fun trilogy, with an innovative way of exploring a whole world and its characters by moving the narrative perspective to different strangers falling into Sophie and Howl's path. And Wynne Jones is so good at writing flawed protagonists that have tactile learning journeys throughout the story. We all know Howl's vanity and Sophie's short temper, but Charmain has to learn how to be an adult herself even in perhaps less dire circumstances.

There is a certain whimsical nature often missing from contemporary children's books in these older stories. Whether it's from a time without such cheap technology (though the first book does indeed include an 80s TV). The fantasy may be less 'high' but more self-assured in introducing new elements and worldbuilding without pages of explanation. Maybe that's saying something about modern storytelling sensibilities, but it is often nice to dip back into this style every now and then.

As always, the mystery resolves itself rather sweetly, though it did feel like Charmain had less to do with it than the previous heroes of the series. I think I certainly enjoyed it less than I imagine a younger reader would find it. But, as Neil Gaiman says, Dianna Wynne Jones is simply the best at writing magic, and it's nice to have her iconic trilogy off my reading list.

Sisters of Sword and Shadow, Laura Bates

Book Title: Sisters of Sword and Shadow

Author: Laura Bates

Date Started: December 31st 2023

Date Completed: January 4th 2024

Genres: Historical, Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I was caught off guard by how much I fell head over heels for this book. It's an epic tale of adventure and belonging, going places you don't expect but are perfectly conceived, almost sidelining as a spin-off to Arthurian legend. While it's seemingly targeted at a younger audience, it's still massively enjoyable for older readers.

While the main narrative focuses on Cass and her journey to becoming a knight, the side plots are the real bursts of colour in this tapestry. Whether it's her relationship with secondary characters, coming to terms with her past, the relationships of the sisterhood's leaders, the politics of land ownership and more, it paints this whole story with so much more detail. But it never, even in moments of drama or angst, do they overwhelm the main story being told or the backbone of the heroine. Cass remains Cass the whole way through and everything else just makes it more vibrant.

Some may argue that the themes explored aren't suitable for a younger audience, but I think the tough things are done in such a responsible way. Obviously, misogyny was going to be core to this story, but Bates also touches on things like sexual violence, classism and mental health sensitively and without being graphic. She also focuses on the emotional experiences surrounding them, and how to move on with a support system.

I actually hadn't realised the author was Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project until I got to the acknowledgements at the end. While I'm not overly familiar with that book, it went a long way to explaining how this book had managed to be so exciting and fun, but accessible, political and brave. With so much detail, fun exploration and representation, it was awesome. To put it simply, I would've been obsessed with it as a child, and it was a pretty great ride as an adult too.

The Screaming Staircase

Book Title: The Screaming Staircase

Author: Jonathan Stroud

Series: Lockwood & Co #1

Date Started: April 12th 2023

Date Completed: April 21st 2023

Genres: Adventure, Mystery, Horror, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Double Day for this proof copy for review (from 10 years ago, I'm sorry) ◆

Having enjoyed the show, and receiving this proof copy in the mail about a decade ago, I thought it was time to have a little easy read from my TBR. The first Lockwood & Co book was good fun, exciting and spooky, and just the sort of thing I was looking for. Like the show, the well-balanced mix of worldbuilding and fantasy building, fleshing out parallels and similarities with our own reality, was pretty key in making the spoopy ghost-hunting adventures feel more mature and complex, with bigger enemies clearly at play behind the curtain and waiting for the heroes to find them.

It's fair to say that the recent Netflix adaptation is really quite faithful to the book, though this first novel instalment takes up a mere couple of episodes as the start of the tv series. On reflection, of course it was destined for Netflix glory as its episodic style, with multiple seemingly unrelated threads all tying together into a chilling finale is the perfect source material for such creations. And, even though I know the story and its twists, I still found experiencing it in its original medium engaging.

The most significant area of surprise for me was how unkind to its characters the prose is. There are constant jokes about George's weight (there isn't a single time he's referenced that doesn't include exaggerating his size) and Lucy 'smiling prettily' to get her way and being more 'sensitive to emotions' than the boys. Look, I don't think it's unfair to say that it hasn't aged very well in the last 10 years. That had no small part in making me appreciate the TV show and how well it adapted the story, developing areas of weakness and utilising the cinematic and enthralling mysteries and themes.

Unfortunately, the early 2010s attitude of body shaming and casual sexism isn't honestly something that fills me with a great desire to continue the series in book form, though I hold big hopes for the continuation of the more culturally-conscious Netflix adaptation bringing me more exciting ghost-hunting adventures with (their version) of the gang.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess

 Book Title: Daughter of the Moon Goddess

Author: Sue Lynn Tan

Series: The Celestial Kingdom Duology #1

Date Started: December 10th 2021

Date Completed: December 17th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Ultimately, Daughter of the Moon Goddess wasn't for me, and the cutesy romance was not enough to keep me around. I made it 19% of the way through and had been considering giving up from very early on. I wanted to give it a chance and see how the early story developed, but more and more I realised most of my problems were with the writing style and general storytelling decisions which weren't going to change. I don't think it's a bad book, but its style is not something I want to invest more time into.

This book reads like middle grade, probably aspiring to jump into teen themes a little later in the series. There's so much inner monologuing (with a protagonist who collects information pretty slowly) and little actual drama in the outside world. Xingjin really didn't seem that bothered by anything happening to her, including what you'd imagine are some pretty traumatic experiences.

I'm also slightly sad that the worldbuilding is a little sparse. We get some little tidbits of what I believe to be Chinese myth (apologies if I'm a little off), but considering this is literally set on the moon there's very little description or aesthetic inclination to help us build what I imagine must be a fantastical empire on a celestial body - a really cool and unique thing to this story.

The reason I gave up where I did was the lack of direction in the actual story. Xingyin is supposed to get somewhere to escape the events at the beginning of the book, but she isn't very rushed to do so. I sort of forget she had that goal. Every obstacle she faces on the way to that goal is also very easily tied up without much input from the protagonist herself.

As I say, I don't think Daughter of the Moon Goddess isn't worth reading, it just isn't for me. I was expecting something aimed at a higher age range, whereas this reads very middle grade to me - nothing wrong with that, it just wasn't what I was expecting and lends itself to a few of my pet peeves that just makes reading it not as enjoyable an experience.

Witch Child

Book Title: Witch Child

Author: Celia Rees

Date Started: May 16th 2021

Date Completed: May 19th 2021

Genres: Historical

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review,

celebrating the 20th anniversary of Witch Child's publication ◆

Witch Child was one of those famous books everyone had read when I was a kid and one that I never felt particularly inclined to get around to for whatever reason. That being said, having read it as an adult I think I probably would've enjoyed it when I was younger - the set-of of a fictional historian discovering a quilt with diary pages of a girl accused of witchcraft was a stroke of genius, and my imagination would've totally latched onto that and run wild as a preteen.

Rees deals with the subject matter with surprising maturity and complexity for a book accessible for younger audiences. Of course, there isn't as much violence and horror as would likely have been the reality, but there's still a chilling realism to the attitudes and stupidity of the town and how far they'll take their beliefs. As with much fiction about the 'New World', you spend most of it despairing that literally anything can and was twisted to be incriminating if someone felt like it. Although, even with that, the climax was a little sudden and abrupt, presumably because it cut out all the really dark bits - not a problem for me, personally, if it makes the material more accessible.

Mary herself was a great protagonist. Her prose was articulate but didn't feel constructed; she had everyday worries as much as her overarching obstacles, and I really liked the fact that she was aware she would be considered a witch - and she possibly considered herself one too. It added a layer of conflict between self-preservation and self-acceptance. I enjoyed the general ambiguity over whether there was more afoot than hysteria, racism and misogyny.

Twenty (one) years on, and Witch Child seems to remain as interesting and celebrated a novel it was when I was a kid. It's well-suited to the 12-15 range (is that what it's aimed at?) but enjoyable for older readers too. A mature but accessible door into a very recognisable and important piece of American (and British) history.

La Belle Sauvage

Book Title: La Belle Sauvage

Author: Philip Pullman

Series: The Book of Dust #1

Date Started: March 28th 2021

Date Completed: April 2nd 2021

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

La Belle Sauvage builds on the original His Dark Materials books as a prequel but lets its protagonists be their own heroes and have their own story. While very much in the vein of its predecessors with its whimsical adventures and secret organisations, it was definitely a lot of set-up for what will presumably come later in the Book of Dust series.

The two halves of the book have very different vibes; we have a murder mystery thriller with science and secret agents at the beginning, and then we have a more traditional adventure to fantastical islands in a biblical flood during a cat-and-mouse chase to escape the baddies in the second chunk. While I enjoyed both, it was a bit of a weird pivot that left quite a few threads hanging untied by the end of the novel.

Pullman has once again written good characters to frame his narrative. My personal favourite was Dr Hannah Relf, who mirrors Mary Malone from His Dark Materials. In hindsight, there are a lot of similarities with the character roles in the two trilogies, but each has their own personality in this new instalment that it's only looking back that I'm noticing all the structural crossovers. Maybe it's deliberate, maybe not.

I do have to admit that the cliffhanger ending was a bit of a let down for me, especially since I know that The Secret Commonwealth (the next book in this series) doesn't directly follow on from the events of this one. While the goal of the book was achieved, there's very obviously something else to be done - I trust Pullman enough as a storyteller to know it'll be solved eventually, but I'm not a massive fan of narratives that jump around their own timeline to withhold information just to make you read the next one.

The Amber Spyglass

Book Title: The Amber Spyglass

Author: Philip Pullman

Series: His Dark Materials #3

Date Started: December 31st 2020

Date Completed: January 17th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Of all the books in the His Dark Materials trilogy, it's what I remember least of from my childhood. Rereading it again as an adult was a weird mix of the novel and fragments of my own memories scattered through. It's not really what I remembered, but that made it all the better to rediscover.

I can't help but feel this review is going to be less of a review and more of an afterthought having finished my reread of this trilogy. Lyra and Will remain fantastic protagonists, and while I'm not here to compare the novels with the BBC show, I definitely appreciate Mary Malone more as an adult and having watched Simone Kirby's wonderful portrayal.

It's so good, and in a lot of ways I find it hard to grasp why, but it has to do with being honest and not underestimating its (mostly younger) audience. It did not disappoint but I am at a loss of what to say about it. I only know that I am glad I grew up with these books, and am excited to begin the sequel trilogy now that I truly remember the original story.

Lirael

Book Title: Lirael

Author: Garth Nix

Series: The Old Kingdom #2

Date Started: October 13th 2020

Date Completed: October 27th 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

Lirael, like the first book in the Old Kingdom series, was another really fun read - again, I know I would've appreciated and enjoyed it more as a kid than I have as an adult.

I do have to say I felt a lot more immersed in this one. I had an idea of the world and its rules already, so I was really able to pay attention to the new things Nix was introducing and exploring. That's always the most fun in fantasy, and while Sabriel was packed full of it the action was also such a dominating force forward that it was hard to balance focus on both at the same time.

For me, Lirael's story did veer a little too much in Sam's direction for a book named Lirael in the middle, but once they met up she definitely got to come into her own and Nix's token balance of power dynamics in various relationships shone once again. (Speaking of, I also really liked the way Nix referenced the first book and its events a lot, but allowed Lirael to be its own story).

My one complaint is about the ending, and I don't think I can possibly be alone in that - let's be honest, it was a cop-out. We get to such a high point of tension, a dramatic reveal, and then we just end - quite similarly to Sabriel. At least this finale won't be quite as rushed as I always felt Sabriel had been, but it was a bit of a let down for the story to finish so suddenly without solving the big problem from the start of the book. It felt too constructed to bridge over to the next book to be satisfying.