Emma Types Stuff

At last, at last. A book that makes me want to run around shaking people by the shoulders, forcing them to buy it immediately. KJ Parker is my discovery of the year. After picking up Prosper's Demon  (a renaissance-inspired fantasy novella about demonic possession) I was blown away by the subtle richness of his writing and the sheer audacity of his storytelling. Get comfortable , the book seems to say as it shows you around its detailed world, but don't get too comfortable.  Inside Man , the sequel, was honestly better. It flipped everything we thought we knew on it's head - never cheaply - and created a Dante-inspired hellscape and a philosophical, depressed demon we desperately wanted to trust.  So then we get to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, a full novel this time, and the first in a trilogy. We've moved on from Fantasy Renaissance Italy to Fantasy Ancient Rome, which after my summer of Roman reading  suited me just fine.  Orhan is an engineer who b...

I don't recall purchasing this book. I don't even recall picking it up and starting it. This is likely because I bought it within about ten seconds of reading the summary, and started reading it about five seconds after that. Before I'd realised what was happening to me I was already several pages in. Because what a summary it was. Space Opera [Catherynne M. Valente] is the story of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, a trio who were basically Queen meets the The Mighty Boosh for about five minutes - before one of them literally crashed-and-burned in their car and the other two stumbled into their 'has-been' era. When aliens make contact, Earth discovers that the galaxy has been nearly destroyed by a war and that an interplanetary song contest is the way all new species are invited to prove their own sentience. Or else. With humanity destined to be wiped out if they get the dreaded nil points , the contact team helpfully provides a list of artists who mi...

There are very few authors that I dip into pretty much every year, and even fewer who publish enough to allow me to do so. Terry Pratchett was one, and Alexander McCall Smith's genteel No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books are like a yearly visit to old friends.  Gail Carriger's extensive Parasol Protectorate universe is the other.  For those of you who recognise the books, I can sense the surprise. Vampire/Werewolf Steampunk novels are the very essence of that Devil Wears Prada ' groundbreaking ' meme. I probably wouldn't have picked up the first (Soulless) had I not been seeking salvation in a second-hand bookshop while on a very tedious day trip.  The cover has a woman in Victorian garb, ripped straight from a DeviantArt Steampunk page, and a title in hot pink. Luckily I was being dragged round charity shops, at the seaside, in March and therefore up for literally anything that sounded more fun than that rainy experience.  So here is my guide to the series,...

In case you missed the marketing juggernaut, Tim Burton's take on Wednesday Addams was released on Netflix last week. I was thrilled - as a lover of the original series, the 1990s films, and even the recent cartoons, I enjoy literally any version of the Addams Family. (Except the Tim Curry movie. I'm kooky, not insane.)     This inspired me to begin a new series called Character Book Club in which I take a fictional character and suggest books I think they'd enjoy.   So here are four titles I think might bring a - small, wicked - smile to Wednesday's face.  My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix   Wednesday's schooling is the source of numerous storylines throughout The Addams Family history. The potential for her to unleash chaos on the blandest of highschoolers is too delicious to pass up.  However, she can sit this one out, because in My Best Friend's Exorcism, a demon does it for her.   This story begins in a way that would give any member...

Last year Amazon released the criminally underrated Kevin Can F*** Himself . It's the story of a perfect sitcom housewife. In one moment she is standing in the brightly-lit living-room, performing to the fourth wall and setting up her manchild husband's punchlines, the next she is in her dingy, cockroach infested kitchen, shaking with anger while she fetches him a sandwich. The show moves between the two worlds, as Alison realises how trapped she is and fights to escape her husband's control. It's a beautiful metaphor for an abusive marriage, with a fantastic queer love story and it deserves more attention, but I digress.  Redshirts by John Scalzi is Kevin Can F*** Himself meets Star Trek: Lower Decks . Five new Ensigns arrive on a suspiciously Starship Enterprise-y ship. They all have interesting and trope-filled backgrounds - a former monk, a sexy but tough medic, a billionaire's son trying to make it alone, and a rogueish minor drug dealer. They are ready to lea...

I've always associated 'romance' books with the Catherine Cookson books my nan used to read in front of the TV, or the books I skim past in the 'free eBook' section of Kobo. As a queer woman, most heterosexual romance stories don't appeal, and even the queer romance I read tends to cross over with other genres. If I want romance, I usually read fanfiction, which is free and about pairings I care about. But, the modern romance market is currently packed with self-aware, interesting titles, and one of them is this book: Love in the Time of Serial Killers (Alicia Thompson). I'm trying to be more open and less judgemental about my own reading, so I was willing to give it a go, especially since I am a millennial woman and therefore have a subscription to every true crime channel available to me. Phoebe's having a hard time, and not in a cute romance book 'I got locked out in my pyjamas and my boss was a jerk to me!' way. In a 'my dad just died, I...

If you are my age (which is Millennial, to be clear) you had Enid Blyton forced upon you from the start. Childhood was basically an exercise in levelling-up on Enid Blyton books. You started with Noddy, then moved on to The Wishing Chair and The Faraway Tree , before you entered your 'boarding school era' with Malory Towers and The Naughtiest Girl in School. Then came either The Famous Five or The Secret Seven , at which point you had to choose whether you were a Five Fan or a Seven Stan. For some reason no one was ever both. (Side note, Enid Blyton was a terrible person in many ways so I'm not going to over-romanticise her. She was a person with prejudiced opinions who wrote decent-but-twee books that aged really badly. The End.) I was a Famous Five girl, mainly because the BBC made a series for children's television at around the same time. Even if you haven't read them, you know the trope - two boys, a useless girl, a tomboy, and a dog. They solve mysteries an...