I’m having fun now with Halloween Bingo. I’ve left my reading gloom behind. ‘The Frangipani Tree Mystery’ refreshed me and gave me a whole new series to read. That means that two of the five books I’ve read so far got five stars.

I’m reading three books at the moment and they’re all good although all of them are different shades of bleak.

‘Riot Baby’ is very powerful, acutely observed, faithfully told and disturbing more because of what it says about being black and young in an American city than for the Speculative Fiction elements of the story.’

‘Ship Breaker’ has wonderful world building but it’s a world that’s very unforgiving and our hero is at the very bottom of it, where survival is a toss of the dice and safety is a dream.

So far, (I’m about 25% through) The Changeling’ is an immersive, fully-imagined story of a young…