Chez Aloysius

Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Wed, 20 May 2026 10:58:52 GMT

Carl's Doomsday Scenario is the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. I managed four whole days between finishing the first one and starting this one - but I think the highest peaks of my obsession with this series are (probably thankfully) over - at least for now...
This one has a bit of a slow start, with the whole of the first hour dedicated just to Carl and Doughnut choosing their race and class for the next dungeon level.
I wasn't wholly happy with some of the choices made about certain characters, I struggled a bit more with some of the stereotypes, especially regarding female characters, it definitely didn't make me laugh as much, and some of the humour and some of the violence tipped very close to my ick threshold.
So - diminishing returns already? Overly high expectations from the first book (which I likely enjoyed more because my expectations going into that one were low) not quite being met?
I also could have done without the evil clowns and the parasitic worms...
It was still largely fun, though - and still very clever, not just in the moment but also in terms of how many really complicated and fascinating things are set up for later books... Plus, we get more character and relationship developments, which are all good.
It definitely got me hooked again by the end, so I'm still keen to carry on, but I'm going to start taking longer breaks between volumes.

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Birds and Unbecoming

Sun, 17 May 2026 06:41:50 GMT

The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson is an in-depth exploration of a complex mental illness, largely from a female viewpoint. It was likely groundbreaking in the 1950s, but a modern lens shows the doctor to be wildly unprofessional, and the presentation of the illness to perhaps not be particularly accurate. It's also pretty circular in its narrative, with a lot of repetition and very little in the way of sympathetic behaviour from any of the characters.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is the start of a YA paranormal series about a girl who may or may not have powers relating to predicting other people's deaths. It probably wasn't a sensible choice for me - it freaked me out pretty early on and I decided I wasn't interested enough in the story to want to carry on with it.

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The Murderer's Ape

Sat, 16 May 2026 11:01:30 GMT

I picked up The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius from the local station free book exchange - it's a middle grade historical adventure about a gorilla named Sally Jones, who has to try and help her best friend after he's falsely accused of murder.
Unfortunately, it didn't really work for me - Sally Jones narrates the story in first person, but feels rather removed from events because she can't talk, so the other characters don't really interact with her much. There's also a surprising lack of emotional depth to the narration, considering the themes and the first-person perspective. It is middle grade, I suppose, but I've read plenty of middle grade fiction that is really emotive - and this also has come quite adult content (drunkenness, mentions of a brothel!).
I gave it a good go - I got nearly halfway through - but ended up DNF-ing because I just found myself not wanting to pick it back up.

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The Paying Guests and The Incandescent

Thu, 14 May 2026 20:56:09 GMT

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters is set in 1922 and follows Frances and her mother, who are forced to invite lodgers into their home because of financial difficulties after the war.
It gripped me entirely for the first half, took a rather unpleasant turn in Part 2 and then got quite dreary by the end, unfortunately.
Quite a lot of it was very awkward and painful, with a fair few very annoying characters, and I lost sympathy for the protagonists in the latter sections, which was a shame because the writing was excellent and I was initially quite invested.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh follows Dr Saffy Walden, the director of magic at an elite boarding school. It's a lot more about teaching and school management than it is about demon summoning, though there's enough demon summoning to provide quite a bit of excitement along the way.
There's great bisexual representation and I loved the approach to the romance - the only sex scene is wholly practical and amazing because of it, while the main relationship is adorable because of the awkwardness of the mid-to-late-30s participants.
What I thought was going to be the main climax actually happened only a third of the way through, the second climax was also rather a red herring and it took a very odd turn towards the end, with a style change that went on perhaps a bit too long.
But overall, I absolutely loved this - as a middle-aged, bisexual, ex-teacher, who loves process and form-filling more than actual inter-personal interactions, this was very definitely the book for me. The protagonist even went to the same Oxford college as me!

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Dungeon Crawler Carl

Sun, 10 May 2026 19:58:19 GMT

I've been resisting trying Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman for quite some time - even though, or perhaps because, everyone I follow on BookTube has been going on and on for months about how good it was. It really didn't appeal to me, particularly as I don't generally react well to comedy - but I was even more worried that I'd love it and then be stuck having to catch up on seven more books before then having to wait for the next ones to come out...

And I'm just gonna say it - everyone was right. Goddammit, Doughnut!

I wasn't initially keen on the narrator's 'normal' voice - though performance and production values on the audiobook are very high. All the character voices are awesome, the special effects are just enough to give extra layers of enjoyment without being over the top, and I got used to the narrator well before the end.

It had me snort-laughing out loud in the street, which is rare and always welcome. It also had me frowning at certain aspects of the humour and going, 'EWWWW!' quite a bit, but the pure enjoyment of the overall adventure far outweighed the aspects I wasn't so keen on.

And it does have levels - and not just the dungeon levels! It doesn't delve massively into the trauma of most of the human population being killed in the initial creation of the dungeon, but it does touch on it. And Carl does reflect on how distasteful it is to be forced to kill the monsters, as well as lamenting how many of the other crawlers keep dying as things go on. There's also the start of a really beautiful friendship between Carl and Princess Doughnut (the cat), which I can see deepening a lot as the series continues.

There's a lot of clever seeding of what's to come to make you want to read on, both in this book and drawing you into later instalments - plus lots of inventive variety which presumably keeps making it fresh and interesting, even though it's essentially just Carl working his way down the levels.

The grimace-inducing bro humour is in there - but it's almost entirely restricted to the achievement announcements, which are simulating video game text, so it's pretty authentic for this kind of game... It treads a clever line so it will retain people who might be offended by implying it's satirising these types of games, but also provide the humour itself for those who will enjoy it.

By the second half, I was wanting to keep listening to the exclusion of everything else and can see myself powering through the whole series without a break. This is not how I envisaged the next few months of my life going. Goddammit, Doughnut!

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Crossroads

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:42:38 GMT

Jonathan Franzen was recommended to me as the kind of writer who populates his books with almost wholly unlikeable characters, but it doesn't detract from the reading experience because they are layered and interesting, regardless.
So, when I spotted Crossroads at the local station free book exchange, I thought it was worth giving it a go.
Initially, I found the prose quite difficult to parse in places - he does love an overly long sentence with too many subordinate clauses! But either the prose settled down or I settled into it, as that became much less of a problem as it went along.
All the characters were, indeed, unlikeable - the story follows Russ and Marion, a married couple, and their four children, in the US in the early 70s. There are five viewpoint characters (the youngest son doesn't get a POV) and I read a chapter from each, which ended up being 190 pages of the 580-page book.
All of them were self-involved, self-loathing (to a greater or lesser extent) and self-aware only in the sense of being disgusted by their own behaviour but apparently unable to change it (which is relatable, but not particularly entertaining to read about).
I did like the chapter from the point of view of the second-youngest child, Perry - but I wasn't prepared to read all the others just to get back round to him, especially since the chapters were pretty long.
So, after very definitely giving it plenty of time to really grab me, I decided not to continue.

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The Matchmaker's Gift

Tue, 05 May 2026 17:14:30 GMT

I decided to read The Matchmaker's Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman because of a reading challenge where I needed a book with 'make' or 'maker' in the title and I thought this one sounded as thought it might be fun.
And it really was.
It follows Sara in the first half of the 1900s, discovering she has a gift for spotting love matches and wanting to pursue a career as a matchmaker in a part of society that does not trust young unmarried women in that role.
It also follows her granddaughter, Abby, who is working as a divorce lawyer in the mid-1990s and discovers more about her family's past and her own abilities when she is given her grandmother's journals.
It was an easy listen, well read by the narrator and a fun story - while the first half felt rather slight and it looked like it would be very predictable, things definitely ramped up in the second half, there were some surprises, and I ended up absolutely loving it.
In the last half an hour or so, it had me laughing and crying at the same time - on the train.
Lovely book.

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Frieren and Rusch

Mon, 04 May 2026 09:57:29 GMT

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End follows an elven mage on a journey to try and get to know humans better, years after she was part of a band of heroes that defeated the demon king.
I was a bit apprehensive going in, since the style and humour of manga doesn't always work for me - but Volume 1 in particular was really lovely. Very contemplative, with great depth of emotion and only occasional bits of humour to lighten the tone.
There was also a very interesting exploration of how different lifespans affect attitudes to time, purpose and death.
Volume 2 was a lot darker and more violent, and Volume 3 felt very meandering and rather silly - but I still enjoyed them and plan to continue the series at least for a bit longer.

Search and Recovery by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is Book 11 in the Retrieval Artist univers, though Book 4 in the Anniversary Day subseries. I've mostly really enjoyed this whole set of books so far (with a couple of dips) but this one was disappointing. Rather than moving on from the end of Book 10, it went back in time to the start of the Anniversary Day section of the story and seemed to retread a lot of old ground without really revealing anything new. There were seven viewpoint characters in 225 pages, which felt like a lot, and the stories within this particular book didn't reach any sort of conclusion, so it felt weirdly transitional and also suggests we won't be going back to the 'present' of the story in the next book either. A real shame.

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Vengeful

Sat, 02 May 2026 20:28:02 GMT

I completed my recent reread of the first two Villains books with Vengeful by VE Schwab, which is much chunkier than the first book, but follows largely the same approach. The chapters count down to a particular time and place, which is set out from the start, so things gradually get more and more tense towards the end. Various factions of powered and non-powered people hunt each other, with some new and interesting characters introduced for this instalment. As with the first one, it's very well-written, but didn't really hit my emotions all that much. But I'm glad I reread both in anticipation for the third coming out later in the year - and I'll definitely be interested to see where the series goes next.

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A Holy Maiden's Guide to Getting Kidnapped

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:08:46 GMT

A Holy Maiden's Guide to Getting Kidnapped by Katy Nyquist follows Ysabel, a holy maiden with a healing gift that costs her a day of her life every time she uses it – she’s enslaved to a corrupt church until a dark lord comes on the scene and disrupts everything, including the state of Ysabel’s heart.
I went in a bit apprehensive – I thought the tone and humour level might not appeal to me – and it was a bit hit and miss.
This wasn’t helped by the audiobook narrator, who over-dramatised every aspect, including the irreverent tone – though the over-emphasis was lessened by speeding up the narration (which broke my New Year’s resolution, but not really because I did it to improve the listening experience rather than just to get through the book quicker.
The biggest problem was that the flippant tone diminished the depth of emotion for me, which meant the relationships didn’t ring true – it also didn’t feel to me as if the blind devotion of Ysabel’s followers was earned because we didn’t see how their relationships were developed – and this was the same for the romance, which felt like it got very intense far more quickly than was credible.
The stakes and emotion really ramped up towards the end and I got a lot more invested, but it did meant it felt very different in tone to the rest of the book.
Overall, I would say it’s a good book – well written and effective at what it’s trying to do – just not really for me.

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Vicious

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 18:01:09 GMT

This weekend, I reread Vicious by VE Schwab and really enjoyed it. I read it in just over a day, and it was great to sink into a very well-written book for hours at a time, after multiple DNFs in a row.
Looking back on my review from 2019, I mostly thought the same things this time around - complex, layered characters; interesting worldbuilding if occasionally not fully making sense; compelling writing, though perhaps not as emotive as I would have preferred.
But well worth the reread, especially since a new one in the series is coming out later in the year.

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More DNFs for April

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:18:36 GMT

Third and fourth DNFs in a row - it's not been a good couple of weeks!

The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst is an earlier work by this author - I loved The Spellshop and mostly enjoyed The Enchanted Greenhouse. This one definitely isn't in the same cozy fantasy romance vein - it's more action-focused and not particularly jolly. I unfortunately didn't connect to the characters and felt the plot wasn't very engaging. I made it just past the halfway point but then decided not to carry on because I wasn't interested enough.

To Walk in the Way of Lions by H Leighton Dickson is the second in the Upper Kingdom series, set in the far future, after humans have died out and been replaced by anthropomorphic cats. I really enjoyed the first book when I read it last year, and was mostly enjoying this one up until quite close to the end (barring the scattered typos and frequent confusion over which character was being referred to at different points). Then it took a really unpleasant turn in the last 100 pages, with incredibly horrible things happening to the characters and their animal companions and I just couldn't finish it. Which was a shame, because it's an interesting series and I would have liked to know where it went overall.

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Cards and Pigeons

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:57:25 GMT

We played two new games with some friends on Friday night!

Flip 7 is a push-your-luck card game, where each player gets dealt a new card each round, until they either decide to stop or get eliminated. The cards are numbered 0-12, with the higher numbers being more frequent. Your score in each round is the sum of the numbers on the cards you have - but you get eliminated if you get a card that matches one you already have. There are special cards that either benefit you or cause problems, to add extra layers and randomness to the proceedings. We played several times and it was a lot of fun, even though I came last or second to last in every game.

Oh My Pigeons, on the other hand, is a very annoying game, where you have a piece of cardboard that can seat a certain number of pigeons. You have a hand of cards, which give you actions to obtain additional pigeons or steal them from other players - or swap boards with people. There's also a mechanic by which you can flick a die towards another player's board to knock their pigeons off. It's almost impossible to keep you pigeons for more than a couple of rounds, which makes it very difficult to win - which is achieved by filling your board with pigeons. There were some amusing moments, but it was largely just irritating.

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Whistledown Woman

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 21:21:01 GMT

Whistledown Woman by Josephine Cox was another random selection from my local station free book exchange - the blurb on the back made it sound like it might be my kind of book (young woman discovers previously unknown secrets about her family history) but the tortured, overblown prose, egregious use of exclamation marks in the narrative, and uncomfortably problematic romance referenced in the first few pages had me giving up on it very early on.

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The Last Kingdom

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 20:50:24 GMT

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell was randomly on my e-reader for some reason so I thought I'd give it a try, but it wasn't for me! Very spare writing, very action-focused ('this happened, then this happened, then this happened' - as well as battles and torture and women as spoils of war), very little emotional connection to the first-person protagonist. Not my thing so I didn't get very far with it.

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The Essex Serpent

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:26:54 GMT

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry was another book I randomly picked up at my local station free book exchange, having heard about it on reading retreats but never been interested enough to seek it out. I'm very glad I decided to give it a try, though, because it's excellent!
It's about a young widow who travels to Essex after the death of her husband, in search of fossils, but she finds a lot more than she bargained for in the deep connections she forges with the local pastor and his family, while the village is in the thrall of superstition and fear around rumours of a malevolent serpent frequenting the nearby waterways.
The writing is exquisite - generally lovely, but with frequent images and turns of phrase that cut deep. The character portraits are layered and extremely well observed, and the leisurely pace was a welcome requirement (I had to slow down to appreciate it properly).
The story took some unexpected and satisfying turns - though the ending was a bit nebulous.

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First Time Caller

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 10:05:12 GMT

First Time Caller by BK Borison has been on my radar for a while - I'm not generally a massive fan of contemporary romance books, but this was recommended by a fair few BookTubers I like, saying it might appeal to people who don't read a lot of romance - and it did!
I liked the radio show setup, the unconventional family dynamics, and both protagonists were engaging. It had two great audiobook narrators, which definitely helped, and also largely avoided the worst of the romance tropes that usually really annoy me.
So, overall, a fun and satisfying read.

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Blue Monday

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:41:42 GMT

Blue Monday by Nicci French is the first in their Frieda Klein series, about a psychotherapist who gets embroiled in a child abduction case when she gets weird vibes from one of her patients.
I really enjoyed another Nicci French book I read last year but unfortunately this one didn't live up to expectations.
The writing wasn't bad, and I quite liked some of the characters - and I was intrigued enough to keep reading to find out where it was all going. But I came up with a theory relatively early on that would have involved one pretty terrible cliche - and then the main twist ended up involved an even worse terrible cliche, so that was a bit disappointing. Some of the sections were really very unpleasant as well.
It also felt more like a mid-series book than an introduction to Frieda because it felt like we were dropped right into the middle of her life with very few explanations of anything.
But - the biggest issue I had with the book is as follows... It's called Blue Monday. The blurb on the back starts with the words: "Monday: five-year-old Matthew Faraday is abducted." But, in the book itself, it's mentioned categorically on several occasions that the little boy is abducted on a Friday...
I'm guessing the idea behind the title (the next in the series is called Tuesday's Gone and the rest of the series continues in kind) was potentially devised quite late in the day, or at least after the book's contents had been finalised. But still, somewhere along the way, I would have expected someone in the editorial team to have spotted that error, especially since the book was published by Penguin!
So, not really a success for me, I'm afraid.

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Sweep of the Heart

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:26:25 GMT

Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews is the fifth book in her Innkeeper Chronicles series - which I've come back to more than two years after listening to book four.
It follows the story of Dina, who runs a magical inn that caters to various alien races from across the far reaches of space.
The series is an interesting mix between urban fantasy and space opera sci-fi - and I've thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through.
In this book, the inn hosts an inter-galactic spousal selection competition, which requires Dina to accommodate people from 12 different alien cultures, all of whom have different needs and desires, and some of whom are dangerous or in feuds with some of the others.
It's a whirlwind of a plot, with far too many characters, factions, layers and shenanigans to keep track of, but I just let the audiobook happen and loved every minute of it.
The only downside is that it turns out this isn't the last in the series, and there are major arc-plot threads still to be resolved! I guess I'm glad I have more of this world and characters to look forward to - but it's been four years since this one was published and the author is apparently focusing on a different series for now, so there's no indication as to when the final instalment of the Innkeeper Chronicles might arrive...

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The Summer That Changed Us

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:18:15 GMT

The Summer That Changed Us by Cathy Bramley was a book I grabbed either in a charity shop or from my free station book exchange, thinking it might be a light, frothy read I'd pick up one day - but definitely wasn't on my priority list.
And it is fairly light and frothy - for all that it deals with some quite heavy topics - and I absolutely loved it.
It tells the story of Katie, Robyn and Grace, three women of three different decades, who meet by chance on a beach one day and form the kind of deep, abiding female friendship I thought you only found in books - but that reminded me vividly of some of the wonderful women I now have in my own life.
I could say it's rather lacking in diversity and it's a bit reductive in some ways - but I devoured it in a couple of days, forgoing almost everything else to read it for long stretches at a time. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me very happy.
Definitely a five-star reading experience for me.

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The Watermark

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:03:26 GMT

The Watermark by Sam Mills sounded like exactly my kind of book - a nefarious author lures people to his cabin in the woods and traps them inside his novel-in-progress to help him inject new life (quite literally) into a failing story.
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino is one of my favourite books - but unfortunately, this is not that.
I loved the premise but the execution left a lot to be desired. The characters felt flat, the writing wasn't compelling, and there didn't seem to be anything about it over and above the endless repetition and litany of absurd events to provide any thematic depth.
The sections for each story-within-the-story were also way too long without really getting anywhere.
It's possible Mills may have pulled it all together in an interesting way, but sadly I wasn't invested enough by the 25% mark to want to find out, so I gave up.

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The Square of Sevens

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:47:52 GMT

My brother gave me The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson for Christmas - and it turned out to be an excellent pick for me. It follows Red, a young woman who gets embroiled in a complex and dangerous court case that will determine the ultimate recipient of a vast fortune. She is a fortune-teller, so there's a lot in the book about cartomancy, curses, superstition and suchlike, though the book never establishes with any certainty if any of the potentially supernatural elements of the story are real.
It's well over 500 pages and I read it in three days, to the exclusion of almost everything else. I wouldn't say it ever really engaged my emotions beyond a couple of specific moments, but it was very compelling, highly entertaining and very cleverly constructed. It got perhaps a bit too ridiculous in terms of twists and turns in the last few pages, with quite a bit of summary that went by in rather a flash of confusion.
But, overall, a very, very good read.

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Is This Seat Taken?

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:11:33 GMT

Is This Seat Taken? is a very cute little logic puzzle game that I've really enjoyed playing over the last couple of weeks. It's set in a world of different shapes, following rhombus Nat on her journey around the world in search of fame in the film industry. Each level presents a different situation (various vehicles - cars, boats, trains; various locations - film premieres, football games, gigs; various other places - classrooms, airports, beaches) and a group of characters with different requirements about where they sit. Each location has a selection of seats in different configurations and you have to place all the characters so they all get what they want.
A couple of the levels were pretty fiendish, but it was mostly just really fun trying to figure out where to put everyone. And the throughline of the story added a welcome extra dimension of interest to proceedings. Very enjoyable.

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Alibi

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:08:37 GMT

Alibi by Sharon Shinn turned out to be rather a disappointment to me. I mean, looking at my old reviews, my history with this author has always been more hit and miss than I would have said - but I have tattoos based on some of her books, so I always look forward to a new release from her. That said, this book has been out for almost 18 months and in my possession for nearly six, so it's taken a while to get to the top of the pile.

Still, I was hopeful. I usually enjoy her worldbuilding and nearly always find her characters engaging, layered and easy to connect to. Here, though, the worldbuilding felt lacking and few of the characters seemed real to me. Also, for a sci-fi murder mystery, it's really, really boring. Almost nothing happens for nearly 250 pages, and then everything happens all at once in a very abrupt and not particularly satisfying way in the last 30 pages.

Found family is always a strong draw for me - and certain aspects of that here did get to me and prompt some warm emotions. But overall, not a winner.

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Fairy Tale and The Mars House

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:04:21 GMT

Fairy Tale by Stephen King took me rather by surprise. It's my fourth King read (after the Bill Hodges trilogy last year) and I went in with some apprehension, worried that it might be too scary or too gory for me. But I needn't have worried. It does have some unpleasant aspects, but nothing that put me off too much. And the first 200 pages or so were absolutely a five-star read for me. That section follows 17-year-old Charlie as he befriends an elderly neighbour and his equally elderly dog, after the neighbour falls from a ladder and breaks his leg and Charlie offers to look after his dog and do some chores around his house for him.
Sadly, the middle 200 pages or so dipped to a three-star read - pretty much exactly when the fantastical elements in the story came into play. It was still good, but it definitely lost some of my interest and started to feel like it was dragging. The final 200 pages or so pulled it back up to a four-star read, as my emotions were fully engaged again and the climax provided some much-needed excitement, drama and satisfaction. I was particularly impressed with the masterful way King dropped multiple small details into the story that became significant much later on.
Overall, a really good read.

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley also took me by surprise because the main aspect that I absolutely loved in it was the romance - which is often something in books that doesn't really work for me. It's also a very complex, layered, political sci-fi story with fantastic worldbuilding, a great range of interesting and engaging characters, some good twists and turns, and an effective emotional throughline.
I figured out one of the main mysteries quite early on, which made subsequent clues about it a bit frustrating - but the way things played out did surprise me in multiple ways. I loved all the stuff about language (especially the mammoths) - but it was the romance that really kept me wanting to read more, and also made me cry.
Unfortunately, a couple of very extended flashbacks in the last quarter of the book made my interest dip significantly, and I'm not sure I fully understood or agreed with the eventual resolution of the seemingly impossible societal dilemma that was at the heart of the political conflict that made up most of the plot.
Still, really good overall.

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