⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ll be honest: this one took me a little while to click with. Not in a bad way, exactly — more that I had to adjust my expectations. The opening didn’t immediately grab me in the way some Discworld stories do, and for a bit I felt like I was circling the edges of … Continue reading A Scrappy, Sharp-Edged Fairytale
⭐⭐⭐⭐ I just finished There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, and I have to say, it’s exactly the kind of weird that gets me excited about fiction. From the very first entries, there’s this uncanny, almost clinical tone that makes you feel like you’re reading a classified briefing rather than a story, and I … Continue reading Bending Minds and Reality
⭐⭐⭐⭐ I went into The Judge’s House expecting a quick, slightly dusty Victorian ghost story, and what I got was something far more quietly unsettling than I anticipated. It’s short, sure, but Stoker absolutely understands how to make brevity work in his favour here. There’s no wasted space, no meandering setup — just an atmosphere … Continue reading Judgement Without a Jury
⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ve just finished Night Watch as part of my slow, slightly obsessive chronological read through the Discworld books, and I’ve got to say: this one really stuck with me. Not in a loud, laugh-out-loud-every-page way (though there’s still plenty of Pratchett humour), but in a heavier, more reflective sense that lingered after I closed … Continue reading History, Hoods, and Sam Vimes
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 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
Gareth Ellis - Author 