⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a perfect example of Terry Pratchett doing what he does best: taking something familiar, twisting it sideways, and using it to say something sharp, kind, and quietly profound. On the surface, it’s a playful riff on the Pied Piper story, complete with a talking cat, a … Continue reading A Clever Con with a Surprisingly Big Heart
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jingo is one of those Discworld novels that sneaks up on you. You go in expecting a fairly straightforward bit of satire — nationalism, flag-waving, the absurdity of war — and you get all that, but you also get something sharper and more uncomfortable than it first appears. On the surface, the plot is … Continue reading Laughing All the Way to the Battlefield
⭐⭐ I really wanted to like The North Woods, but by the time I finished it, I mostly felt tired and a bit let down. The biggest issue for me is the pacing. The story takes an absolute age to get going. There’s a lot of scene-setting, atmosphere-building, and slow circling around ideas, which isn’t … Continue reading A Long Walk Nowhere
⭐⭐⭐ When I first read The Lost World years ago, I remember absolutely tearing through it. I loved it almost as much as Jurassic Park, which is no small thing. At the time, it felt like a worthy continuation: more dinosaurs, more danger, more of that Crichton techno-thriller momentum that made his work so addictive. … Continue reading A Nostalgic Reread That Doesn’t Quite Hold Up
There’s a particular kind of unease that creeps in when you realise the monster (or antagonist, the terms are often interchangeable) isn’t lying, and everyone else is. Not because the monster is gentle or fair or deserving of sympathy, but because it never pretends to be anything other than what it is. The fear doesn’t … Continue reading When the Monster Is the Most Honest Character
Jack Mercer had been on the road since dusk, running a long-haul job that took him across a stretch of desert most truckers avoided when they could. The route wasn’t unsafe so much as unnerving. It had no towns for miles, no reliable radio signals, no lights except the ones you carried with you. Some … Continue reading The Thing By Mile Marker 19
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead quietly unsettles you rather than going for big shocks, and that’s exactly where it shines. A retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, it keeps the bones of the original story but dresses them in something far stranger, funnier, and biologically grotesque. The atmosphere is … Continue reading A Creepy, Clever Reimagining That Gets Under Your Skin
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I finally sat down with Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney after years of loving both the 1956 and 1978 film adaptations, and I’m honestly kicking myself for not reading it sooner. I’ve watched those films so many times—each one with its own charm, its own atmosphere, its own flavour of creeping … Continue reading A Classic I Should’ve Read Years Ago
Released in early access on 14 November 2025 on PC, Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault arrives as a confident, ambitious sequel that keeps the charm of the original while branching out in all the right ways. The most obvious change hits you straight away: the series has shifted from its cosy top-down pixel-art look to … Continue reading Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault — Early Access Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I first picked up His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet on the recommendation of one of my university lecturers. At the time, I was working on a project with some thematic overlap, and, honestly, it felt like perfect timing. I’m still working on that project now, and reading this novel has been both … Continue reading A Gripping Blend of Crime, History, and Psychological Depth
Gareth Ellis - Author 