Close followers of my GeekDad posts may be aware that I’m going through an existential crisis regarding my book reviews. I’m lurching about trying to find a way to make engaging content, find reading time, and provide a good service to the authors whose work I’ve been lucky enough to read. All too often, great books fall by the wayside because I just don’t have time to write about them all.
Towards the end of 2023, I started a YouTube channel to devote to book reviews, with the hope that video reviews would be easier to create than written ones. It has not worked out that way. I find them much harder to make time for and few people watch them. One thing I have noticed is that compilation videos seem to fare a little better, rather than those that focus on a single book.
With this in mind, I’m aiming to produce at least 2 videos a month, one at the start, and the other, at the end. One will look forward to what I’m going to read, and the other will review the experience, with an overview of what I thought about each book. I’ll also write two accompanying posts on GeekDad. If any books are particularly good, I shall aim to write a full-length review on GeekDad too.
I didn’t publish a January book preview post on GeekDad but I’ll include my video here, so you can see what I intended to read and judge how the month went.
January 2024 in Review.
I wrote about two books on my January pile – The Bitter Crown by Justin Lee Anderson and Countdown to Yesterday by Shirley Marr. These were both excellent books and I urge you to check out my reviews to see why.
More generally, I noticed a theme in many of the books I read this month. There is a strong thread about underlying power structures and control of the masses, in a number of the books I read. A sign of the political times, perhaps?
For the First Time, Again by Sylvain Neuvel was a brilliant climax to the Take Them to the Stars series. I recently nominated book 2, Until The Last of Me as one of my books of the year for 2023, and this book was up there in quality. This has proved to be a wonderful counterfactual series that examines the history of spaceflight in an unusual fashion as well as introducing readers to some amazing female scientists and astronomers from across history.
In the UK, Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, garnered countless words of praise in the nation’s print media reviews, appearing on numerous Children’s books of the year lists. I treated myself to a copy and I am so glad I did. I often find it hard when reading books that have been given so much acclaim. My inflated expectations often lead to disappointment.
I do wish I could have come to Impossible Creatures expectation-free because I still found my opinion colored slightly, but nevertheless, this is a children’s book of the highest caliber. Impossible Creatures wears its influences on its sleeve, most notably, Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials.
The book is set in a world with a magic land hidden in the North Atlantic; one filled with a myriad of the titular impossible creatures. The magic in “The Archipelago,” however, is dying. It’s down to two children to save it. One of the children, Christopher, is from the real world United Kingdom. He discovers that his family forms a line of guardians of The Archipelago. Mal is an orphan who lives in the island kingdom; she has an affinity for its ailing creatures.
A tale of sacrifice and heroism, with a huge dose of real-world allegory, Impossible Creatures is breathtakingly magical and has all the hallmarks of becoming a timeless classic of children’s fiction. It’s up there with His Dark Materials, The Dark Is Rising, and The Box of Delights
Very different in tone (it is very much NOT a children’s book) is Shigidi by Wole Talabi; yet the two books share the same roots of mythology and a secret world hidden behind our own. Shigidi is steeped in the traditional religions of Africa, most notably those of Nigeria. It’s a complex tapestry of superstition, mysticism, examination of colonialism, and magic.
Shigidi is a nightmare god; a member of a collective Spirit Company. He is unhappy with his lot. After a chance encounter, he meets Nneoma, a succubus, who very much follows her own path. She tempts Shigidi away from his current state of existence and the two of them adventure together. They then find themselves drawn into a plot to liberate an artifact from the British Museum.
Subtitled “And the Brass Head of Obalufon,” Shigidi is nominally a heist novel, with Shigidi and Nneoma tasked with recovering the head for their freedom. The actual burglary, however, takes up little space in the novel; the rest spans centuries, even drawing in Aleister Crowley. Whilst the heist is thrilling and intriguing in equal measure, where the novel shines is its depiction of the squabbling pantheon of Nigerian gods.
The book is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods but Wole Talabi’s voice is uniquely his own. The book leaves a path open for return adventures of Shigidi and Nneoma, and I would definitely be interested in whatever Wole Tababi writes next.
Disclosure: I received some of the books mentioned in this article for free in exchange for a review. For the First Time Again, and Impossible Creatures were my own purchases.
