Emma Types Stuff

I want the opening of every book to be a sharp hook. I want it to snag my navel and then drag me through next three-hundred pages, depositing me at The End , wobbly-legged and light-headed. The Hierarchies [Ros Anderson] mostly achieves this. For the experience alone it deserves five stars, which I usually only hand out for those rare gut-hook books.  But, five stars or not, it wasn't perfect.  Ideal for a book review blog, really...  The Hierarchies is a near-future sci-fi novel. In it, 'pleasure doll' Sylv.ie is unboxed by her new 'husband' and adjusts to life in the attic of his family home. She's not the rubbery sex-doll you would imagine, but instead a human-passing, sexually athletic, trained mistress. She can talk current events, sports, politics, and can achieve every move in the Karma Sutra. She can cry (with the help of a reservior of water) and you can fill her scent module with any perfume you choose. She can dance. She can play chess. Her pussy even

I actually wasn't planning to review Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight [Don Bassingthwaite]. It's fairly niche (I got it in a Storybundle ) and a google search proves that it's tricky to track down... but oh boy is it worth it. My face hurt at the end, because I'd been grinning for hours. This collection of interconnected short stories takes place across the year, covering Christmas, Hannukah, Mardi Gras, Pride, and St Patrick's Day. I read it during my December Reading challenge but the largest story in the collection is based around St Patrick's Day. I think it works best then. Besides, how many St. Patrick's Day books are there?  Derby Cavendish is a just your average gay man, with a strong sense of queer community and a healthy desire to attend camp, themed events. Unfortunately he attracts magical mayhem wherever he goes. The poor guy can't even buy a Christmas tree without being pursued through the woods by an generously proportioned Mi

The Handmaid's Tale is the book that made me scared to be a woman but The Power is the one that made me angry, physically, explosively angry. I spent much of the latter clenching my fists, willing the electrical power given to women in that novel to pour into them and free me of the enforced backfoot my own gender keeps me on. One in which men will always be physically stronger than me. When Women Were Dragons [Kelly Barnhill] is a book that takes the next logical step, and asks... what if women were given access to their potential? What if, instead of freeing women from oppression, their powers gave them the ability to explode out of their small bodies and learn, build, help others, and - yes - take revenge as they please? But unlike The Handmaid's Tale and The Power , this isn't a book that educates the reader on the female condition. It doesn't try to paint one view of womanhood or represent them as a universal whole (it's also more queer and trans friendly tha