dorothea

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/21/review-the-tomb-of-dragons/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18260

The Tomb of Dragons

by Katherine Addison

Synopsis:

Thara Celehar has lost his ability to speak with the dead. When that title of Witness for the Dead is gone, what defines him?

While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.

Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.

Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Oof, I feel conflicted about Katherine Addison’s The Tomb of Dragons. There’s a lot in it to love, with Celehar’s emotional journey seeing some progress, a peek back at the court and at some of the characters (including Maia, yes), and some lovely additions to the world-building. Characters recur, depth is added, and I broadly enjoyed the reading experience.

My criticism is, however, that as a reader I felt there was something being built up that Addison absolutely dropped and spilled all over the floor. It was, I’ll be frank, clunky. It’s like when a series realises that two male characters are being shipped together, and hastily introduces a love interest for each in order to head that off. It feels like a “no homo” moment (even though Celehar does remain gay, and does have a potential romantic interest in this book whom I don’t dislike). It felt like emotionally we were leading up to a particular relationship taking a romantic turn, and we not only didn’t, but we didn’t in such a clunky way that it didn’t feel right.

I can’t speculate on why that narrative thread wasn’t followed through, and I know that other people may not have felt invested in it, or may not feel as attached to it… but to me, it went a fair way to souring my enjoyment, because it just made no sense to me narratively or as part of the characters’ relationships. I think there are few things about this book that could have broken my enjoyment so thoroughly as that did — other than messing up characterisation, like having Maia do something cruel (or at least, do so and not then act to right the wrong), I think this is the only thing that could have come so close to ruining the whole experience.

As it is, I sort of feel like removing this book from my mental canon and thinking aw, what a shame that this series was never finished.

That probably sounds dramatic, to people with low investment in that relationship, or who disagree with me that the narrative was logically building to that. And that’s fine, I’m sure there will be others who love this novel. There is much to love. But for me, it was a disappointment.

Rating: 2/5

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/21/review-the-tomb-of-dragons/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18260

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/20/stacking-the-shelves-the-sunday-post-71/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18244

Posting much later in the day than usual because I was working on the submissions of my final(!!) assignments for this degree. Exams still to go, but my assignments are in and I am free for a while. Wooo!

So let’s quickly get to talking about books…

Acquired this week

This week was a quiet week until today, where I both got a package of new books (having spent the last of my store credit at Bookshop.org) and went to Waterstones to take advantage of their double Plus stamps offer for this weekend. I haven’t catalogued the Waterstones haul yet, so let’s just stick with my new light novels from Bookshop.org for now!

I’ve been having fun with the manga (even if I have some reservations that I’ll discuss when I review them), so I’m looking forward to these!

Posts from this week

Mostly just reviews! So here’s the roundup…

• Non-fiction: Endangered Languages, by Evangelia Adamou (3/5 stars)
• Romance manga: A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 10, by Akane Tamura (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy: The Rainfall Market, by You Yeong-Gwang (3/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: Villainy at Vespers, by Joan Cockin (3/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate, by Anna Bogutskaya (1/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: A History of Britain in Ten Enemies, by Terry Deary (2/5 stars)

What I’m reading

Sadly not a lot, this week, though I have been getting through some manga! Here’s my usual peek at the covers of books I’ve finished this week and plan to review…

Which isn’t too bad considering how busy I’ve been!

As for what I’m going to read over the weekend… now I’m free, who knows? Probably my new light novels, but I’m not ruling anything out.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/20/stacking-the-shelves-the-sunday-post-71/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18244

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/18/review-a-history-of-britain-in-ten-enemies/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18242

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies

by Terry Deary

Synopsis:

Ah, Britain. So special. The greatest nation on earth, some say. And we did it all on our own. Didn’t we?

Well, as it happens Britannia got its name from the Romans, and for the past two centuries we have been ruled by Germans. But then, as Horrible Histories author Terry Deary argues, nations and their leaders are defined by the enemies they make.

The surprisingly sadistic Boudica would be forgotten if it weren't for the Ninth Legion, Elizabeth I a minor royal without the Spanish Armada, and Churchill an opposition windbag without the Nazis. Britain loves its heroes so much we have been known to pickle them in brandy to keep them fresh. And after all, every nation sometimes needs a bit of unifying Blitz spirit (although in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have accidentally let Corporal Hitler go in the first place).

The British have a proud history of choosing their enemies, from the Romans to the Germans. You might even say those enemies made Britain what it is today.

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is an entertaining gallop through history that will have you laughing as you find out what they didn't teach you in school.

Terry Deary’s A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is pretty much what you’d expect of someone who wrote for Horrible Histories: flippant, irreverent, willing to be sarcastic about everything, and… almost completely unsourced in a gossipy, opinionated account of history. It’s especially jarring when what he writes is contradictory to something I know is a prominent theory (e.g. that the building of wooden henges wasn’t replaced by the building of stone ones, as Deary suggests, but contemporaneous with them and linked to them: wood for the living, stone for the dead).

At that point I settled in to read it more or less for the tone and anecdotes, and to take everything with a heaping of salt. Each chapter does have a couple of references, but since they’re unnumbered and there’s only 2-3, it’s not very convincing.

If you’re just interested in a casual read, it’s probably perfect; for me, the tone didn’t quite land, and it turns out I get really irritated by such flagrant lack fo sourcing.

Rating: 2/5

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/18/review-a-history-of-britain-in-ten-enemies/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18242

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/17/review-unlikeable-female-characters/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18240

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate

by Anna Bogutskaya

Synopsis:

How bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice.

Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are—gasp—fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point?

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, from Samantha Jones as "The Slut" in Sex and the City to the iconic Mean Girl, Regina George, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture—and society—is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

I really liked Anna Bogutskaya’s book on horror, but I found Unlikeable Female Characters really… well, obvious? It didn’t feel particularly insightful, more like a regurgitation of the plots of various movies and TV series, many of which I was already familiar with.

To be honest, I feel like the question is less why people are so against “unlikeable” female characters (which in this book is referring to characters who are e.g. promiscuous; not everything in this book should be considered an unequivocally unlikeable trait) and more why they hate female characters in general, and that’s part of why this doesn’t satisfy. Growing up being interested in fandom, like Gundam Wing and Final Fantasy VIII, there was such rabid hate for characters like Relena Peacecraft and Rinoa Heartily, and on an adult assessment… actually, they were really nice girls. As an outsider who knows little about the franchise as it stands, it felt like a very similar reaction to Rey in Star Wars, for example. (Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t want to argue that right now.) I think we need to examine that too along the way to understanding liking or disliking “problematic” female characters, though that too is part of the picture.

Digging into that was probably more what I would’ve been interested in, but even so I found this rather repetitive and unoriginal. I’ve read this listicle, basically. It makes me wonder if the book on horror was less insightful than I thought, and more obvious to a fan of horror… This was disappointing, anyway.

Rating: 1/5

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/17/review-unlikeable-female-characters/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18240

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/16/www-wednesday-243/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18233

Wednesday again, and a little break to talk books! Whew.

What have you recently finished reading?

Mostly just manga. I’m now working my way through The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter (Kazuki Irodori adapting Yatsuki Wakutsu’s light novel), and I’m enjoying it. I’m curious to read the light novels, as well, though I’m not actually sure if either manga or light novels are a finished series. Aresh’s interest in Seiichirou is cute, but I’ll get frustrated if they don’t start to communicate about that soon.

What are you currently reading?

The only thing that’s really close to an active read is Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane, which I haven’t picked up in a few days. I’m enjoying it, but I just don’t have the attention span while I’m digging deep to get my assignments done. I am still reading something from Serial Reader, at least, which is Baroness Emma Orczy‘s Unravelled Knots at the moment. I’m not a huge fan of her “The Old Man in the Corner” mystery stories, having read a bunch of them in British Library Crime Classic collections, but I’m curious enough about them to keep reading, at least at this bitesize pace!

What will you read next?

I really don’t know. Because it’s on my Litsy Book Spin Bingo card, I’m thinking about Hetta Howes’ Poet Mystic Widow Wife, and I’m also very curious about Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine as a counterpoint to the other book I read about music streaming. But I’m having a bit of trouble settling down to read because of my assignments and moving-related upheaval, so we’ll see.

What about you?

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/16/www-wednesday-243/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18233

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/15/review-the-rainfall-market/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18231

The Rainfall Market

by You Yeong-Gwang

Synopsis:

A rumour surrounds an old house. Send a letter and if it's chosen a mysterious ticket will be delivered to you. No one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket inviting her to a market that opens once a year when it rains. Here she's offered to swap her life for another. A better one.

The problem? She has one week to find the perfect life and true happiness, or she'll be trapped inside the market forever.

Accompanied by Isha the cat, Serin searches through bookstores, hair salons and perfumeries before time runs out. All while a shadow follows quietly behind them...

You Yeong-Gwang’s The Rainfall Market (translated by Slin Jung) is a fantasy tale of a poor girl who is struggling with just about everything and isn’t sure how things will ever get better, who ends up with a chance to go and exchange her fate for a better one at the Rainfall Market. She examines fate after fate (meeting people along the way, and learning about herself too) while looking for one that satisfies her, but each comes up short in one way or another.

It all feels pretty simplistic, sometimes parable-like, and aimed at a fairly young audience — though sometimes I find that either translation or catching something of the original tone does that, because I’ve had that same feeling about light novels I’ve read in translation, including decidedly adult danmei. (Note: I do know that danmei are Chinese and this is Korean; I’m talking about the experience of reading in translation. It’s a feeling I had longer ago when reading Icelandic sagas, too, that the straightforward “simplistic” narration was just a style I wasn’t tapped into, perhaps accentuated by translation.)

I think even bearing style and translation in mind, in English at least it’s probably appropriate for a reasonably young audience, and might feel a bit “young”.

Rating: 3/5

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/15/review-the-rainfall-market/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18231

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/14/review-a-side-characters-love-story-vol-10/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18229

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Synopsis:

"What can I do to move towards a future with you?"

As spring rolls around, Nobuko and Hiroki celebrate their birthdays together. Their third year of college brings with it a number of changes, causing plenty of anxiety for Nobuko -- until Hiroki makes a suggestion... The two of them begin fumbling towards a future after graduation, even as they grapple with their more affectionate impulses.

Volume ten of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story is all about Hiroki and Nobuko navigating their relationship as it becomes both more settled and a bit more difficult — when they’re rushed off their feet, studying hard, and not able to see each other so often, so there’s a risk of distance and growing apart.

I really love that they repeatedly communicate their way through problems and make promises to each other about it. It’s cute, and also a great model for how you can work through a relationship if you’re brave enough to talk — even when that’s difficult, as it is for Nobuko.

Rating: 4/5

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/04/14/review-a-side-characters-love-story-vol-10/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18229