I still remember ‘Warchild‘ vividly. It was a debut novel that was already fifteen years old by the time I found it. I was taken completely by surprise by it. It was one of the most original, vivid and emotionally engaging science fiction books I’d read in a long time.

“Warchild” wasn’t an easy read. It went beyond the conventions of space opera by confronting the reality of the damage done to the life of Jos, a nine-year-old boy who is abducted, enslaved and abused by the pirate who attacks his spaceship and kills his family. The book follows Jos as he becomes a seasoned soldier, raiding ships, killing those who oppose him, capturing those who surrender and watching the people closest to him dying in battle. On the surface he seems lethally competent but Karin Lowachee dives deeper to show that Jos is damaged: unable to sustain any kind of intimacy with his peers; unable to trust; and deeply troubled by the things he refuses to let himself remember but which attack him through his dreams.

If you’d like to know more, my original review is HERE

‘My Year Of Meats‘ (1999) was a delightful read that provided an accessible story, engaging characters and humorous glimpses of two cultures misunderstanding one another and still managed to take a serious look at the American meat industry and the American public’s unwillingness to believe unpleasant truths.

The novel tells the story of Jane, a Japanese American documentarian, who spends a year making a series called “My American Wife” that is intended to promote the sale of American beef in Japan by showing wholesome American housewives cooking wholesome American meat.

Much humour arose from the gaps in perception between what is happening in front of the camera and what makes it to the TV show, the gap between Japanese and American views of wholesomeness and the gaps between how men and women react to things.

I enjoyed Ruth Ozeki’s lightness of touch. Her people were believable. Her humour was compassionate in its way and yet she still managed to seed new ideas and concepts.

She also made me glad that I was a vegetarian.

My original review is HERE

‘The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie’ (2009) was the first book where I met Flavia de Luce,  an eleven-year-old girl with a remarkable mind and dauntless heart, who is determined to solve a murder her father has been arrested for committing.

The book is set in England in 1950. Flavia lives in a large and once grand Stately Home with her two older sisters who are close to each other but exclude her, her emotionally withdrawn father and no memory of Harriet, her adventurer mother who is missing, presumed dead.

Flavia made me smile. I loved the rational way her mind worked. Most of all, I loved her indomitable spirit. She is still one of my favourite child protagonists.

I read the first six books in the series over the course of the next nineteen months. The sixth book disappointed me but, from the reviews I’ve read since. I think the series is one I will return to one day.

My original review is HERE

I first encountered Mercy Thompson, werecoyote and Volkswagon mechanic, in January 2017, when ‘Moon Called‘ rescued me from the boredom of a long haul flight. I’d been put off the series by the dramatic but largely inaccurate covers. Once I read the first book, I knew I wanted all of them. As I was a decade late joining the party, there were lots of books for me to binge on.

I consumed ‘Blood Bound‘ on my next long haul flight. It carried straight on from ‘Moon Called‘ with Mercy getting the vampires and the werewolves to work together to hunt something evil that was preying on people in the area.

It was an exceptional Urban Fantasy adventure, partly because Mercy was likeable without being in the least bit saccharin and partly because the book could be read as an entertaining adventure or as an extended insight into the complexity of dealing with abusive power from a position of weakness without becoming abusive yourself.

I read the first nine books in the series in 2017. I’m still reading them now, although Mercy and I have both grown a little older and wearier in the meantime. Still, I’m looking forward to the fifteenth book being published in March 2026.

My orginal review of ‘Blood Bound‘ is HERE