Book review – Page 14 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

TBR Pile Review: Empire of Normality – Neurodiversity and Capitalism, by Robert Chapman

Format: 224 pages, Paperback
Published: November 30, 2023 by Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745348667 (ISBN10: 0745348661)
Language: English

Blurb

Neurodiversity is on the rise. Awareness and diagnoses have exploded in recent years, but we are still missing a wider understanding of how we got here and why. Beyond simplistic narratives of normativity and difference, this groundbreaking book exposes the very myth of the ‘normal’ brain as a product of intensified capitalism.

Exploring the rich histories of the neurodiversity and disability movements, Robert Chapman shows how the rise of capitalism created an ‘empire of normality’ that transformed our understanding of the body into that of a productivity machine. Neurodivergent liberation is possible – but only by challenging the deepest logics of capitalism. Empire of Normality is an essential guide to understanding the systems that shape our bodies, minds and deepest selves – and how we can undo them.

Robert Chapman is a neurodivergent philosopher who has taught at King’s College London and Bristol University. They are currently Assistant Professor in Critical Neurodiversity Studies at Durham University. They blog at Psychology Today and at Critical Neurodiversity .

My Review

Robert Chapman works with a couple of neurodivergent academics (Hi Louise and Anna ¹ )I know, so I heard about this book months before it was published and pre-ordered it as soon as I could. There was a problem with the publisher’s computer system and my pre-order was lost so I had to re-order it. I did end up getting a discount because of that though, so I’m not complaining. I also ordered a few other books from Pluto Press, which I will get around to reading and reviewing. Eventually.

This book was an absolute joy to read. Chapman explores the history of neurodivergent people and the disability and neurodiversity rights movements. They explicate and critique anti-psychiatry, Freudianism and other areas of psychiatry, and confirming what I’ve said for years, capitalism is to blame for everything!

No, seriously, think about it.

Why do we have to be machines that happily work set shifts every day doing repetitive uncreative tasks? Capitalism.

Why do we have to fight for any form of social support? Capitalism.

Why are so many more people struggling with their mental health? Capitalism.

We live in a society where everything has a price and if you can’t produce you are a drain on society. The Tories have placed the blame and burden of austerity firmly on disabled people. Neolibralism, that monster set loose by Thatcher on our social and educational systems, pushes things further than ever before, and now we have fascism rearing its ugly head again. This is not hyperbole and if you think it is, you haven’t been listening to disability rights and neurodivergent rights activists, anyone who gives a damn about civil society or social equity.

I tried to say similar things to Chapman in my booklet about neurodivergent history, and couldn’t quite express myself the way I wanted to or get the message I wanted across. Part of that was lack of theoretical background (I am not a philosopher) and part was the funding source. Can’t write a socialist history or a manifesto for neurodivergent equality when you’re getting government funding and working for a non-partisan charity.

Yes, I liked this book because it agrees with my personal politics², but that’s not the only reason. Chapman writes clearly, fluently, and makes convincing arguments for their position. They explain and explore history, making connections between different areas that might not be clear, although their examples show that other people have made those same connections in the past. By putting the neurodivergent experience in the context of capitalism, viewing the changing place of neurodivergent people through a Marxist lens, we can see the connections between the way capitalism has narrowed our lives and shaped the paradigm through which we are viewed by society, the medical and political system, and how they choose to treat us.

I have already recommended this book to several people and will be asking for a copy for our Little Neurodivergent Library at work.

Insert mad waving here. They’re all a part of the Medical Humanities Department at the University of Durham, my alma mater, not that Durham would admit that I ever went there. ↩︎
Burn it down, pull it out by the roots, start all over again with an equitable society from the beginning. ↩︎

TBR Pile Review: Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo

Format: 120 pages, Hardcover
Published: September 12, 2023 by Tordotcom
ISBN: 781250851437 (ISBN10: 1250851432)

Description

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass – and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather’s body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honouring their mentor’s chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.

But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien’s own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate. . .

The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle are linked by the cleric Chih, but may be read in any order, with each story serving as an entrypoint.

TBR Pile Review: System Collapse, by Martha Wells

Format: 245 pages, Hardcover
Published: November 14, 2023 by Tor Publishing Group/Tordotcom
ISBN:9781250826978 (ISBN10: 1250826977)

Description

Am I making it worse? I think I’m making it worse.

Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is… not going to work.

Review: Yule Island, by Johana Gustawsson

PUBLICATION DATE: 1 DECEMBER 2023
HARDBACK | £16.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Blurb

Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the
antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s
wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman
was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.

Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding
her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to
hide? As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery
yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover
the secrets of the house and its occupants.

When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters
surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and
memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could
this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key?
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a
chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past
– Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest
winter…

TBR Pile Review: Til Death Do Us Bard, by Rose Black

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover
Published: November 21, 2023 by Hodderscape
ISBN: 9781399724685 (ISBN10: 1399724681)
Language: English

Blurb

Marriage isn’t always sunshine and unicorns… sometimes it’s monsters and necromancy.

In a world of magic and adventure, Logan “the Bear” Theaker had hung up his axe and settled down with his sunshiny bard husband, Pie. But when Pie disappears, Logan is forced back into the world he thought he left behind.

The kingdom is in turmoil, and Logan must come out of retirement to save it. But first, he must save his beloved husband from whatever danger he’s in. With the help of an old adversary and a ghost from his past, Logan discovers that Pie has been blackmailed into stealing a powerful artifact capable of creating an undead army.

The fate of the kingdom hangs in the balance as Logan and his team set out to stop the brewing war and put an end to the king’s ban on magic. But in doing so, Logan must confront his own hero complex and come face to face with the one man who’s ever made him feel worthy of love.

Legends & Lattes meets Kings of the Wyld in this thrilling, queer, light fantasy. Follow Logan and Pie’s journey as they fight to save their love and the kingdom they call home.

My Review

I got myself a signed copy of this book from Goldsboro Books a couple of weeks ago and started reading it when it arrived two days ago. I’ve been busy with work and blog tours so I only got three chapters in, until this evening. Four and a half hours later I’ve finished reading the book.

We meet Pie and Logan at a village festival, a few months after they marry and settle down from their lives on the road as a bard and a hero. But things quickly go wrong when Pie disappears on a trip to the nearest city and Logan has to search for him. He calls on a necromancer he once arrested and that sets off a chain of events that eventually include grave robbing, nearly drowning, killing a king and unicorns, lots of unicorns.

This romp of a story is a D&D campaign! Seriously, it has the sorts of characters and structures you get in a really good game, with a really good DM. There’s an inciting event, a quest, a collection of characters who appear and join the expedition, monsters to defeat, an even bigger challenge to over come when it looks like you’ve got to the end, and a final big boss to destroy. It was a lot of fun to read.

It was also heart-breaking at times! Pie and Logan are absolutely wretchedly in love and their arguments are caused by love and their insecurities as they face their pasts and their feelings. I cried, a few times. I

I’m soppy, I know.

They’re so lovely though, and they develop over the course of the novel as they confront their fears and insecurities about being left behind, and express how overwhelming their love for each other is.

I found the countess hilariously funny, relentlessly positive and of all the secondary characters she’s my favourite. She has a sad history, uses her magic for seemingly trivial things like getting the gardening done, and is feared because she’s a necromancer. Yet, she comes through in the end, even though she sort of betrayed Logan before the story started. And she has a CHARTER!

I loved the descriptions of places and people in the book, they were very evocative and quite, quite amusing at times. The contrast between the ‘real’ world, the ‘pocket’ world of the unicorns, and death’s realm were very clear and stark. I loved the descriptions of the library in the capital. Also, totally agree with Logan on the suspended walkways. They are a baaaaaad idea.

Highly entertaining light fantasy. Recommended.

Review: Sunny, by Colin O’Sullivan

ISBN: 978-0-06-337335-8
7 Dec 2023
£ 10.99

Blurb

SOON TO BE A MAJOR STREAMING SERIES

A riveting technological thriller following a woman whose life is upended when her husband and son disappear in a mysterious plane crash and she is left alone with an unnerving home robot, only to get caught up in an AI-related conspiracy.

In near-future Japan, Susie Sakamoto is mourning the loss of her husband and son to a plane crash. Alone in her big modern house, which feels like more of a prison, Susie spends her days drinking heavily and taking her anger out at the only “sentient” thing left in her life: Sunny, the annoying home robot her husband designed. Susie despises Sunny, and sometimes even gets a sinking feeling that Sunny is out to hurt her.

To escape her paranoia and depression, Susie frequents the seedy, drug-fuelled bars of the city, where she hears rumours of The Dark Manual, a set of guidelines that allow you to reprogram your robot for nefarious purposes. In the hopes of finding a way to turn off Sunny for good, Susie begins to search for the manual, only to learn it’s too late: the machines are becoming more sentient and dangerous. Thrust into the centre of a dark, corporate war, Susie realizes there’s someone behind the code, pulling the strings. And they want her dead.

With a darkly humorous yet propulsive voice, O’Sullivan presents us with an unsettling look at a future that feels all too real. Gripping and thought-provoking, Sunny is a haunting character study of an anxious woman teetering in an anxious time.

TBL Pile Review: The Justice of Kings, by Richard Swan

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 22-02-22

Blurb

No man is above the law.

The Empire of the Wolf simmers with unrest. Rebels, heretics and powerful patricians all challenge the power of the imperial throne.

Only the Order of Justices stands in the way of chaos. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is the most feared Justice of all, upholding the law by way of his sharp mind, arcane powers and skill as a swordsman. At his side stands Helena Sedanka, his clerk and protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the empire.

When the pair investigate the murder of a provincial aristocrat, they unearth a conspiracy that stretches to the very top of imperial society. As the stakes rise and become ever more personal, Vonvalt and Helena must make a choice: will they abandon the laws they’ve sworn to uphold in order to protect the empire?

Introducing an unforgettable protagonist destined to become a fantasy icon, The Justice of Kings is an unmissable debut where action, intrigue and magic collide.

My Review

I listened to this in August and September, but completely forgot to review it for you all. Since I’m doing my ‘favourite sci fi and fantasy of 2023’ list soon, I thought I’d better add it, because I really enjoyed the book.

In this first book in the Empire of the Wolf series we meet the main characters, Helena Sedanka, Konrad Vonvalt and Bressinger. They are on their rounds, as Vonvalt is a Justice of the Empire, applying the common law across fractious provinces. They are accompanied for part of their journey by Patria Bartholomew Claver, a fundamentalist priest with ambitions to even greater things. In the first village they visit, they find an enclave of ‘heretics’, people following their indigenous religion, instead of the imperial religion of Nema. Vonvalt tries to find a solution that helps everyone, while Claver demands they’re burnt and then leaves. After Vonvalt, Helena and Bressinger move on, Claver returns with Templars and kills everyone in the village, burning them to death.

Later, Vonvalt is called to a port town to investigate the murder of a noblewoman. They find a much deeper conspiracy involving a monastery funnelling money to Claver and the Templars, a woman held hostage, and a child murdered. Helena has to go under cover, while Vonvalt is diverted by the arrival of an old friend and his investigations take him elsewhere.

Claver brings his army to the same town to demand the release of one of the priests held for the murder. He attacks the town, slaughtering innocent residents to hide the evidence of the crimes he and his funders committed. Claver shows his new powers, stolen from the Justices.

Vonvalt becomes obsessed with defeating Claver, getting revenge for the death of his old friend and for the people murdered by the Templars.

That leads us to the start of The Tyranny of Faith.

Helena tells the story, moving between her present day and her past, her recollections of events that lead to the downfall of the Empire. The structure is really interesting and we see her character development from a young, naïve, secretary to an experienced investigator, a scholar of the law. We see her first love, sex, and loss, her heartbreak and her developing relationship with her colleagues. Bressinger is her best friend but he’s a less developed character, while Vonvalt is both her mentor and a man she is developing romantic feelings for. She is torn between her professional obligations and her personal feeling, both for her first love, for Vonvalt, and about her job, killing people, and the things she must give up to be a Justice.

Vonvalt is a highly developed character, a complex man who desperately wants to be a force for good in the Empire, but is torn between the law in theory and the way it’s practiced in reality.

Bressinger is not as well developed; we know he fought in the Riekskrieg, lost his wife and children, to an attack on his home town, and joined the service of the Empire only because Vonvalt was his friend and he wanted revenge.

The worldbuilding is amazing! It is a medieval Germanic inspired world. It reminds me of a cross between the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, with hints of earlier medieval European states. There’s Templar knights and hints of gun powder, while village ladies lead rituals around bonfires to forbidden gods. The supernatural elements are woven into the story completely; from Vonvalt’s necromancy to Helena’s unexpected trips to the ‘Holy Realm’ – the places where the dead and the spirits live. The ‘gods’ are shown to be questionable, while the magic, under different names and either allowed or not depending on who is using it, is a tool that people use or fight over.

The writing is really accomplished and the story flies by. I’d never heard of Richard Swan until I received a signed special edition of this book in the SFF Fellowship subscription in 2022. Now I follow him on Instagram and have the third book in the series on pre-order. I’m a bit of a fan of his writing.

The narrator is really good. We can hear the difference between young Helena and older Helena by the tone of her voice. She puts a lot of emotion into her narration.

If you’re looking for an epic fantasy, try this series.

Review: Mr Gearheart, by Emily Owen

**Book Information**

Genre: steampunk historical fiction
Publication Date 27 November 2023
ISBN 978-1-3999-5773-1
Dimensions 229 x 152mm
Extent 306 pages
RRP £9.99
BIC FL, FV
Rights Worldwide

Published by Open Door Books. Page design and typesetting by SilverWood Books.

Key Selling Points

From the author of The Mechanical Maestro and The Copper Chevalier, a new story following the Abernathy siblings as they face an enigmatic adversary.
Character-driven story centred around three genius siblings.
A steampunk-tinged tale with Gothic overtones sure to enthral fans of clockwork, androids and the Victorian era alike.
Immersive world filled with colourful characters.

Blurb

1863

Six years have passed at Ravenfeld Hall. The Abernathy siblings’ fortunes continue to improve as George and Douglas’s android-building business thrives. But change looms on the horizon. Douglas’s engagement to the sweet, charming Clara Marsden threatens to take him from his family, while sister Molly contemplates whether a future with the man she loves means sacrificing her independence and academic pursuits.

Then the family face more pressing concerns…

One night, George’s latest invention escapes the Hall. Four months later, a charismatic inventor by the name of Gearhart appears in London, with an intellect to rival that of the Abernathys’. George senses there’s something sinister about the mysterious Mr Gearhart, who’s planning to unveil an invention that could change the world. But does he have far grander ambitions? And can George uncover the truth about him in time?

Review: The Wit & Wisdom of David Attenborough, by Chas Newkey-Burden

Publication date Thursday, October 26, 2023
Price £14.99
EAN\ISBN-13 9781856755269

Blurb

Description
A fascinating and entertaining collection of facts, quotes and stories,
celebrating Sir David Attenborough’s wicked sense of humour and astute
wisdom.
David Attenborough is a national treasure, known for his soothing voice, calming presence, passion for the natural world, and his humble, easy-going nature. Despite his incredible talent and influence, he tends to play it all down, one time stating that, ‘I can’t believe I’m still employed’.

So if he won’t celebrate himself, we’ll have to do it for him. Filled with facts, tributes and anecdotes, as well as beautiful illustrations, this enormously
positive book celebrates Sir David, providing a fascinating insight into his life as well as showcasing his brilliant sense of humour. Running chronologically, this book begins with his early days, to his first job at the BBC, to eventually becoming the most esteemed naturalist on the planet, as he is today.

Such revelations include:

There are 18 plants and animals named after him
When asked by a reporter how many degrees he had, he said it would be ‘rude to
count’*
The single thing that would improve his quality of life is ‘good, workable knees’.
Blending his quips galore with his powerful messages on the environment and future of
the planet, this timely book showcases everything we love about Sir David, making it the
perfect gift for any fan.
*He has over thirty!

Review: The Other Side, by Milo McGivern

The Other Side by Milo McGivern
27th November – 15th December
Genre: Children’s Fiction
Age: 8 – 12
Pages: 184
Publisher: Matador
Format: UK Prints
Buy Links
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Side-Tales-Animaux/dp/1805140736/ref=sr_1_1

Blurb

The Island of Animaux is a mysterious, wonderful place. Unknown to humans, hidden by fog and always on the move around the planet. It is a land of crazy, mad, funny adventures. Welcome back!

The five new tales in The Other Side follow on from the ones in the last book, Coffee and Ice Cream. Aubrey the Turkey is once again up to his neck in bother. See where he ends up when a magic trick goes wrong, also how Clifford Platypus, Walli Hog and their friends manage to save him. Travel with Aubrey, Clifford and Walli as they go on an enjoyable seaside holiday, at least for the turkey. Watch as the island becomes stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, unable to move. The biggest crisis in its long history!

Please enjoy the stories. And don’t be afraid to laugh, particularly as Aubrey’s expense. But please, please, please – continue to remember to keep the latest position of the island top secret!