September 2025 - Reviewed

I write this from my desk in Sydney, having just returned from a trip home to England. It was great but a little weird to see the old country, it feels like nothing has changed and then there’ll be something minor that completely throws me off! I did love catching up with friends and family and it was wonderful to be able to travel back to Cornwall, one of my favourite places on earth and swim in the Atlantic after years of being a Pacific girl!

With all the time spent on planes, trains and automobiles I managed to get quite a lot of reading done this month: a total of seven books were consumed and this is what I thought.

A Death in the Rainforest – Don Kulick

A surprising favourite and instant classic, I absolutely devoured this anthropological memoir of the months Kulick spent in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. The descriptions of life for the villagers were endlessly fascinating to me and I thought Kulick described them really well, neither judging them neither harshly nor venerating them as having a purer way of life. He simply writes about them honestly and with grace for foibles that may seem silly to us, pointing out our own bizarre cultural actions. The only thing I absolutely couldn’t handle was the descriptions of the bush turkey eggs, but again I believe this is popular across East Asia as balut or Mao Dan so it really does take all sorts!

Oathbreakers – Matthew Gabriele & David Perry

I was a big fan of the first book from these authors: The Bright Ages, and so I was eager to pick up this account of the Carolingian civil wars. I’m interested but not particularly informed on the Carolingian emperors who aren’t Charlemagne so I was prepared to dive in and learn. I was… a little disappointed. I found the set up interesting, but the civil war itself seemed to be mostly a series of feints by the ever changing sides with only one major battle. Now this is great! I’m very happy that the Carolingians didn’t murder each other and create bloody chaos across Europe, but when the whole conceit of the book is the civil war, and there isn’t really enough detail on any other aspect of middle ages life to support the text it can wear a little thin. Hopefully their next effort will be a little more grabby.

The Parliament – Aimee Pokwatka

I love weird books. There is nothing that will make me click add to basket faster then a really kooky book hook (that was fun to say!). So I was delighted to pick up this story about a library besieged by murderous owls. Mad is trapped in her hometown library with some students, librarians and some old friends, when thousands of owls attack, tearing to shreds anyone who steps outside. But there’s another story in this book: The Silent Queen, Mad’s childhood favourite which tells of a nation afflicted by a great monster that disfigures the daughters of the people but grants them strange powers in exchange. Together these two stories make up a really interesting exploration of grief and bravery which I very much enjoyed.

The Little Book of Dinosaurs – Rhys Charles

This is a pocket handbook all about dinosaurs. Now I picked this up because it was written by a friend of the friend who’s wedding I was back in the UK for (This sentence feels grammatically insane but I’m rolling with it) just to have a flick through. However, I found it charming and very well written. If it’s been a while since you read anything about dinosaurs and you want to update yourself on the science of today in an easy to read format with some stunning illustrations then I highly recommend you pick it up.

When the Wolf Comes Home – Nat Cassidy

This is the book that I struggled the most with this month and it was not because it is bad. In fact it is an excellent horror novel, about a woman on the run with a little boy, escaping from his terrifying and inhuman father. It was a touch too gory for me, I prefer my scary stories dread-ful not horror-ific but I did enjoy the twists and turns and the ideas were great. I truly can’t say anything else without spoilers but if you are a gore fan then I think you would like this a lot.

The Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo

My favourite fiction book of the month this follows a Chinese Malay girl who is asked to marry the ghost son of the rich Lim family. I thought this would be more of a straight fiction narrative where she enters the marriage and deals with the complexities of her position in the house but actually it’s a roaring fantastical narrative involving all sorts of great Malay folklore. Don’t read the blurb or the GR description, just jump in and enjoy.

The Second Death of Locke – VL Bovalino

I was so pleased to do an event with Tori (VL herself) when I was in London and was able to snatch up a copy of this and demand she sign it! I really liked this fantasy novel, I’m not a big romantasy fan and this has enough hard fantasy content to be more than that, but also has just world class yearning and slow burning desire so I think any romntasy lover would also enjoy. I loved the world building and magic system and I am excited to see more in the Locke universe. Because I am a registered lunatic I actually would have loved the yearning phase to have gone on even longer and maybe not even resolved by the end of the book but I recognise that’s probably not a popular opinion. Either way, pick this one up!