Book of the Month: Who Cares About Wales?

This is the second book I've reviewed on my blog by Will Hayward, who is now probably the most influential journalist covering Welsh politics and current affairs. (Read my review of Will's book on Welsh independence.)

This latest book, published earlier this year before Plaid Cymru's historic win in the Senedd election, was a birthday present from my friends Justin and Annabel. So, a big thank you to them!

The basic premise of this book is that Wales has been spectacularly let down by it's politicians in the first quarter of the 21st century. Whether they have been in Westminster or Cardiff Bay, the people making decisions for Wales have often got things wrong. 

Will thinks the people of Wales should get angry about this, and he certainly seems to be. There are plenty of swears to underline points of particular frustration. It gets his point across, but I didn't feel they were all necessary. 

However, he has also managed to produce the most readable explanation of the Barnett funding formula that I've ever read. That gets talked about a lot in politics chat in Wales and it's never entirely clear that people know how it works. 

I can't vouch how right he is on a lot of the issues he covers, but from my perspective of working in the NHS, the issues he identifies in the section on health are bang on. The section on transport, especially rail, is a neat distillation of how Wales has been woefully hard done by. 

There were some real nuggets of interest along the way. For example, the creative sector generates far more economic activity in Wales than agriculture does - and for a fraction of the government subsidies. 

Will is critical of all the political parties, although most of his anger is directed towards Labour as they were the party in government in Wales for the entirety of the devolution era up to the point this book was written. He is particularly scathing about how Labour blamed so many problems on having to work with a Tory government in Westminster, but since Labour swept to power in London in 2024, Welsh Labour was very reluctant to push for all the things they'd been saying Wales needs. 

There is a hopeful conclusion, with some ideas of what could change. Whether any of that will come to pass in the tricky terrain of the first Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd is yet to be seen. I'm sure Will is already working on a book about 2026 onwards!

Book of the Month: The Mountain in the Sea

This was an impulse purchase in a TK Maxx earlier this year, because, well, octopuses.

It's a slice of speculative fiction set in the near future. Political entities and alliances have shifted, big tech companies run the world, and the boundary between human and machine intelligence has broken down. In the middle of all that a scientist fascinated by octopuses is invited to study a mysterious new species that may be sapient.

The scientist is aided by the first true android who may, or may not, be a conscious being. It is the subject of fearful hate and has been banned from most territories on Earth, so is working on the octopus project on a remote island atoll to keep it out of harm's way. Other forces are seeking to access the islands - one for the mysterious octopuses, and one just to harvest the fish that live in the protected zone.

As a 'first contact' story between two species that think very differently, this works pretty well. But there are some other story threads interwoven which are distracting.  I felt the storyline about a human crew enslaved on a fishing boat captained by an AI was horribly feasible but was superfluous to the overall plot. 

There are several conversations that act as exposition. Mini-monologues that explain certain things that, in-world, probably wouldn't need explaining. But generally that's my only real gripe and the exposition moves the story along rather than holding it up.

This is a very grounded science-fiction book, based on what we currently know about octopuses and the fascinating way their brains work. I felt like I already knew some of that from reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaiskovsky, but this went into it in more detail. In the acknowledgements, the author, Ray Naylor, outlines his impressive background reading. He successfully weaves this into the story without showing off about his research.

To conclude, then, as far as speculative fiction goes, this was reasonably believable. Society is changing unpredictable and technology is changing quickly, making the wider human world in this book feel realistic. And octopuses are wonderful clever creatures. If we ever did find ones that could communicate, our inter-species conversations might look a lot like this. 

Book of the Month: Hooked

I was in W H Smiths at Paddington Station back in March and the fish on the cover of this book caught my eye. The book was half price that week so I thought I would give it a go.

Asako Yuzuki's novel, Butter, was a breakthrough hit in its English translation last year. This is the English language follow up, although it was published in Japan two years before Butter. 

The book's Japanese title is The Nile Perch Women's Club, as the titular fish plays a pivotal role as a metaphor for predatory activity that destroys ecosystems. The Nile perch is also the focus for the main character, Eriko, who works in a major fish-importing company that is trying to introduce Nile perch into the fussy Japanese market. 'Hooked' is less relevant as a title and doesn't really fit. 

Beyond the fish metaphor, the book is really about loneliness and the struggle some people have to make friends. Eriko becomes obsessed with a blogger and engineers a friendship with her, which quickly becomes a stalking style relationship. 

Except, told from Eriko's point of view, it's not stalking, it's all a misunderstanding, that could easily be explained if only she could get her new, but distancing, friend to talk to her. The sympathetic presentation of the situation from the point of view of the obsessed stalker keeps the story fresh and helps the author avoid clichés.

The Nile perch was accidentally introduced into a new ecosystem where it was the apex predator and a hungry one at that. As it wiped out the other species of fish it encountered, it gradually destroyed the ecosystem it was thriving in. Similarly, Eriko's behaviour destroys the new ecosystem she finds herself in, and creates problems in her career and family, areas she had been thriving in. 

My only negative comment on the book is the directness of the direct speech. Conversations are more like two characters monologuing at each other, in some detail. That may reflect Japanese culture, or it may be down to the translation. Early on, there was a jarring choice of word that may have been an accurate translation of the Japanese, but just felt wrong. (Annoyingly, I can't remember the word that jarred with me!) Overall, it's a small quibble though.

Hooked is my first foray into Japanese contemporary novels. I liked it and will probably try to read Butter at some point too. 

Book of the Month: Kraken

Kraken was sort of a Christmas gift. At Christmas I was given a book I already had so I went to a bookshop and exchanged it. I had seen China Mieville's books recommended on Reddit so thought I would give one of his books a go. And the dedication page made me laugh.

Who wouldn't want a comrade-in-tentacles?

This was written in 2010 so I'm a bit late to review it but I will try to limit plot spoilers to anything you would read in the blurb anyway.

The story centres on the disappearance of a preserved giant squid, from a display in the Natural History Museum in London. A curator in the museum gets drawn into a shadowy magical underworld of sects and prophecies where everyone is predicting an apocalypse, somehow linked to the vanished kraken. But everyone is looking for it, either to stop the end of the world or to control the destruction for their own ends.

It's clear that China had fun making up different cults and churches and then pitting them against each other. He also develops London itself as a character, a gestalt entity that is both a location and a source of information, if a person knows where to look and how to scry the future from it. 

China wears his influences boldly. This book strongly reminds me of the Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaboration Good Omens, and also the alternative London Below in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I suspect if I saw China Mieville's bookshelves, I would see Douglas Adams alongside Pratchett and Gaiman (although he might, like me, have taken Gaiman off the shelves since the accusations against him were made).

There are throwaway puns aplenty and almost too much wordplay. Beyond that, though, China writes in an arresting style with a barrage of metaphors, neologisms and portmanteaus. This section describing a bit of the city is typical of his style:

"A space between two concrete flyovers. Where the world might end was turpe-industrial. Scree of rejectimenta. Workshops writing car epitaphs in rust; warehouses staffed in the day by tired teenagers; superstores and self-storage depots of bright colours and cartoon fonts amid bleaching trash. London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness. Here was an arena of scrubland, overlooked by suspended roads." (p.357)

China is happy to reference TV and other cultural elements throughout the book. I was delighted to see Farscape included in a list of science-fiction shows. (I blogged about rewatching Farscape a couple of years back.) At one point one of the characters has a dream where he is TinTin being attacked by Captain Haddock. 

But it's not all pop culture. There are descriptions of magical practices that show some research. A reference to 'tekel upharsin' as a prediction of doom shows some niche knowledge of the Old Testament. The real-life grounding of the fantastical story elements in established media and myths makes them more believable.

There are also a lot of swearwords. Characters swear casually in their conversations, which felt realistic, and there is plenty of 'creative swearing', which is a very British thing, and was often very funny. For example, one character coins "munching wanktoasters" to describe members of an occult fascist sect.

If the warning about language doesn't put you off, I would add a warning that there are a couple of gruesome murders and almost murders. They are quite vivid so I felt it worth flagging up because overall I'd recommend people read the book. 

However, London as the best city evvah, gets a bit annoying. There are too many claims made about its uniqueness and special nature, as a locus for magic and the historic depth to its streets. That started to grate after a while. 

And in an ironic twist, I ended up reading a large chunk of the book on train journeys to and from London as I was working down there. On the return journey a man sitting opposite me asked if he could take a photo of the book cover because he thought it looked interesting. I'd never been asked that before. It was a slightly weird encounter befitting a slightly weird book.

Book of the Month: A History of Wales

I have two personal connections with this book. Firstly, this copy belonged to my Dad. According to the note inside the cover he bought this in 1994, which was the year it was first published in English in paperback by Penguin. 

This is one of the few books I took from the vast collection of books that Dad left behind when he passed away unexpectedly seven years ago. There was a bookmark in it at page 505, which for a while I thought was the point where he had stopped reading. But actually it was a marker for a short bit about the Christian revival of 1904 - an event my Dad was very interested in. 

So, I'm not sure if my Dad ever finished reading the whole book. But I have. I was prompted to read it by my second personal connection with the book - recently I've got to know Anna, one of the daughters of the late author, John Davies. 

Anna is standing for election to the Senedd and is top of the electoral list for Plaid Cymru in our area. We were out canvassing one morning and she mentioned seeing a copy of her father's book in a second hand shop. I asked what the book was, thought that it sounded familiar, and later went and dug it out of the stack of inherited books in my office.

Anna gets an anonymous passing mention in the author bio. 

Anna has also told me that it was the first book that Penguin published in Cymraeg. (And it was also a lot longer than originally planned!)

The opening few chapters are easy to read at pace because, truthfully, there isn't much that is easily verifiable in Wales's history up until the Norman invasion. The paucity of Celtic relics from Wales compared to Anglo-Saxon relics from England is down to the Christian faith of the Welsh who unlike the pagan Saxons didn't fill the graves of their dead with stuff that could be dug up years later by archaeologists. So the story rattles along quite quickly.

The few written records of Welsh history from before and during the Norman occupation of Wales are frequently fanciful. John describes the unreliability of one chronicler, Nennius, in a slightly waspish fashion saying: "where it is possible to prove the correctness of Nennius's material, it is clear that his ignorance was monumental."

There are several similar sardonic comments. Regarding the legend that St David raised up a small hill to stand on so he could more clearly address his followers, John points out that in the very hilly area of Ceredigion, "it would be difficult to conceive of any miracle more superfluous". When discussing the 19th century growth of holiday resorts on the North Wales coast, he unambiguously says Rhyl "attracted a less middle-class type of tourist" than Llandudno.

While this is a history of Wales, it's not really a beginner's history. I was glad to have a rough sense of Welsh history already, as several people and events are referred to in throwaway fashion - the reader is expected to know what happened to David, brother of Prince Llewelyn the Last, with two oblique references to his execution in Shrewsbury, without any more detail given. This trait gets more frequent as the book progresses. 

I think the favourite factoid I learned from this book was that to encourage Welsh people to emigrate to America in the 18th century, a story was invented of a Welshman called Madog who sailed west centuries before Columbus and landed in the New World. Madog's descendents were a Welsh-speaking tribe living in the American hinterland, known as the Madogwys. This led to a Welsh explorer setting out to find the Madogwys and along the way he became the first European to map the Missouri River. 

That story is amusing but it shows how powerful stories can be. Earlier in the history, John writes about the growth in Welsh poetry and how the poets reframed the subjugating defeats of Welsh leaders in "a cry against the extinction of identity and against the tyranny of fact." It's an evocative turn of phrase and captures how people have always wanted to describe the world as it should be, rather than how it is.

In later chapters, where there are more reliable sources to draw from, the overall narrative gets a bit bogged down in numbers. It's instructive to compare the numbers of people employed in the coal industry between one generation and the next but there are several such comparisons - numbers of Welsh-born inhabitants, number of Welsh speakers, number of people employed on the land, number of tons of coal extracted and exported, and so on. It all gets a bit statty and less easy to read.

Overall the theme of the book is about identifying the historical processes that resulted in Wales being Wales, an entity different yet thoroughly influenced by England. This uniqueness has survived numerous obvious and non-obvious pressures, from outright conquest through to the conforming pressure of militant socialism in the miner's unions. 

The history of the Welsh language is similarly a history of pressure, again not always from obvious sources. I was unaware of how anti-Cymraeg the unions were in the 19th and 20th centuries. I was struck by the irony that top-down repression of Cymraeg was less effective than the movement that preached solidarity among the workers, effectively the people of Wales robbing themselves of their language.

This (first) edition of the book was published in 1994 and the last chapter covers the discussions about a Welsh parliament in the 1960s and the failed devolution referendum of 1979. There was a second edition published in 2007, by which time Wales had an Assembly and its own devolved government. Proof perhaps that history hasn't stopped. I would like to see what got added to the second edition. 

The final few paragraphs of the version I read - before devolution happened - outline the hope that the Welsh nation will continue to endure, as it had despite everything. The last page or so are very Yma O Hyd in theme and I found it uplifting. It made me happy to think that only a handful of years after the author concluded writing his history, steps had been taken to further safeguard and establish the nation of Wales.

Book of the Month: To Be Taught if Fortunate

I read my book of the month this month on the plane out to Malaga, which is why I'm squeezing it between some posts about Malaga (yes, I'm not done yet!).

To Be Taught if Fortunate came in a bundle of books by Becky Chambers that Connor gave me. I read her first novel last year (it was Book of the Month last July) and have since read two more set in the same futureverse. I'm not sure where this book is meant to be set. It feels like it could be a prequel to her other works but it also functions fine as a standalone.

The story is a broadcast home to Earth by a long-range exploration team of astronauts. The book's title is part of an address included on the Voyager space probe. This team has been sent out by a crowdfunded humanitarian grassroots space agency, which felt like the most far-fetched part of the whole thing to be honest. 

What I like most about Becky Chambers' science-fiction is the careful consideration she gives to details like how waking up after being plugged into a machine would feel, and why you would want to wake up alone and not surrounded by your crew members. It all feels properly thought through and things like hibernation aren't just plot devices to get the characters into the action.

The crew experience some difficulties, but are never really in jeopardy as they explore the exo-planets they have been sent to survey. The psychological disconnect from Earth is very realistic. News messages are 14 years old when they arrive, and so they become meaningless. The astronauts switch off long before the broadcasts cease with no explanation. 

So the astronauts send a long message home outlining their activity. It's sent in hope of a reply but with low expectations. The conclusion is left very open and the story could go in any direction from where it's left off. I liked that ambiguity. 

Book of the Month: The State of the Art

My first book of the month post for 2026 represents one of the shortest time lapses between me getting a book and reading a book. This was a Christmas gift from my brother and sister in law. 

The State of the Art is a milestone book for me because reading it means I have now read all the science fiction books written by Iain M. Banks. There are three stories relating to the Culture - the galaxy-spanning utopian society that features across most of Banks' sci-fi - but the handful of other stories aren't directly Culture related.

A rejig of the shelves will be necessary

The title novella, The State of the Art, is about a review and exploration of Earth by a Contact team from the Culture. The main protagonist is recalling their visit to Earth at the tail end of the 1970s. There is a vivid description of divided Berlin and travelling through abandoned underground stations in parts of the city under communist control. 

Another stand out segment is the protagonist visiting the Memorial to the Deportation on Ile de la Cite in Paris. I first visited the memorial as a teenager and remember being really struck by it's profound simplicity. The protagonist in the story is similarly struck, and also feels anger that humans could do something so terrible to other humans and then create something so beautiful as a way of marking it. 

"I was angry at their stupidity, their manic barbarism, their unthinking, animal obedience, their appalling cruelty... but what really hit me was that these people could create something that spoke so eloquently of their own ghastly actions; that they could fashion a work so humanly redolent of their own inhumanity."

I felt the emotional juxtaposition was probably Banks' own feelings about it, and I get what he is trying to say. If that is him sharing his own feelings, then I also remember the impact of that monument on me when I visited it. I felt a connection with Banks through his description of his character's reaction.

Eventually the Contact team decides to leave Earth without making contact to see what happens to the human society left to its own devices. They hope the planet will be OK, but sense doom for this "backwater rock ball infested with slavering death-zealots on a terminal power trip." (Another eye-catching, brain-snagging, angry description.)

Being blunt, the other pieces of writing in the book aren't too great. The first story, The Road of Skulls, starts with a joke that I found quite funny and then meanders out. Odd Attachment is grisly dark humour. The rest are just a bit meh. The two stories set in the Culture don't really add much. 

Sometimes, though, a book isn't satisfactory in itself but provides satisfaction in another, meta, way. For me, reading this means I can 'tick off' the Culture books, almost 35 years after I read the first one in the series. That's a pleasing way to kick off my reading for the year.

Book of the Month: More News As It's Made

Last month I blogged about the small community of Action Force fans keeping the toy line alive with new figures and custom toys. David Gillis is one of the leading Action Force customisers and his creative customs show just what Action Force could have been if commercial pressures hadn't crushed the original toy line into the GI Joe mould. 

David also has a good eye for photos, and this coffee table book of his Action Force photography was on my radar for a while. A 'black Friday' deal finally convinced me to order myself a copy. And I'm very glad I did.

Briefly, the book is gorgeous. Beautifully laid out to show off the photos, with a mix of scenario-building and real-life details for a lot of the photos. David's love for Action Force really shines through each picture and snippet of backstory.

Presented as photos from the files of the Action Force Photogtaphic Unit (AFPU), the book is split into sections for the four elements of Action Force and then a section on the Enemy led by the evil Baron Ironblood. 

Q-force is the naval and aquatic arm of Action Force. 

At one point in tbe book, David describes Q-Force as "underrated", which I would agree with. The figures still pop up regularly 'on card' and seem easier to find than other parts of Action Force, although Space Force runs them close. 

I've included pictures of two custom vehicles because they are both developed from Star Wars "mini-rigs". Around about the time The Empire Strikes Back was released, Kenner produced some small one figure toys that didn't feature in the films. They were in the pocket-money range for kids, unlike other Star Wars vehicles.

I love how David has taken these vehicles and repurposed them for Space Force.

The more popular parts of Action Force were the SAS Force and the infantry Z-Force. I have a feeling neither would be used on toys now - SAS has probably been copyrighted by the Army, and "Z" has become a Russian propaganda symbol used to express support for the invasion of Ukraine. 

But back in the 80s, Z-force were the good guys.

Stories featuring good guys also have to have bad guys and the ultimate bad guy challenging Action Force was Baron Ironblood who commanded an army of brainwashed soldiers known as the Red Shadows. 

David has created some new characters who have also sworn allegiance to the Baron, but most of the Enemy photos feature the original Red Shadows and Muton robots in various scenes. 

Overall, I think this book would be interesting enough for people who don't have a nostalgic connection to Action Force. The photo work is excellent and the write ups add some great little details to the pictures. 

More News As It's Made is available from Total Toy Books.

Book of the Month: The Road to Independence

This book is Plaid Cymru's evidence to the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales. As you might expect, it lays out very clearly a case for Cymru being an independent nation. For a political book, it's a very accessible read. (It's also shorter than it looks because it's bilingual!)

The book starts with a compelling case why the current political status quo is unsustainable and why half measures like "federalism" won't work. And then it gets into the guts of the argument and directly addresses whether Cymru could afford to be an independent nation in its own right.

That is almost always the first question people ask me when I start talking about annibyniaeth for Cymru. My answer is usually that I don't think Wales can afford to remain trapped in the current union either. Neither can most of England, for that matter. The so-called "fiscal deficit" in Cymru occurs in all the regions of England outside of London and the South East. 

Having travelled to various parts of England for work (and football matches) in the past couple of years, I found it very interesting to see financial figures that back up my hunch that there is poverty across swathes of the country and many communities are on a knife edge. Clearly Westminster isn't working for most of England either. 

The writers deconstruct the various figures used to argue for the unaffordability of Independence. Many of those figures are guestimates; several of the figures presumably wouldn't apply or could be traded off - for example if the coming Republic was expected to inherit some of the debt racked up by the UK, then Westminster would be liable for public sector and state pension payments to people who worked for the UK institutions or have moved to Wales in their retirement. Those costs kind of balance each other out reducing the fiscal deficit significantly. 

The answer to whether Cymru can afford to be independent is therefore 'probably yes'. Much would depend on the terms of leaving the UK - and as seen with Brexit, there are good ways to leave a union and terrible ways to leave a union. Being optimistic, it's definitely possible and hopefully the parting could be amicable. 

Another pressing reason for Independence is the sheer lack of constitutional protections for citizens and institutions in the current UK system. Parliament in Westminster is ultimately the source of all rights and freedoms for individuals, and the source of authority for the devolved Parliaments in Cymru, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Senedd's continued existence relies on Westminster granting powers to it. A different flavour of government in the UK could abolish the devolved Parliaments even if every MP from outside England voting against abolition. 

This shows just how marginalised Cymru is in the UK. There are 32 MPs from Wales in the current Westminster parliament compared to 543 from England. (Scotland has 57 MPs and Northern Ireland has 18.) The number of Welsh seats dropped from 40 in 2019 to 32 in 2024 - a reduction of 20%. This was because the population of the UK grew disproportionately, with a bigger increase in England. Rather than increase the number of MPs, constituency boundaries were redrawn with larger populations. Effectively, Wales lost 8 seats to England. 

Within that context, there is no real hope of the particular needs of Wales being anything but a minor concern to the Westminster Parliament. Decisions can continue to be made that affect Wales without representatives from Wales being able to influence them - see for example the scandalous decision to class the High Speed 2 rail investment as an 'England and Wales' project thereby diverting funding that should have come to Wales, or the decision earlier this year not to devolve the Crown Estate income to the Welsh Government despite the Scottish Government controlling the income from Crown Estate in Scotland. 

The democratic argument for Independence is quite clear.  There is no written constitution to protect the people of the UK from a capricious or malevolent government. Money is withheld from the people of Wales on the whim of MPs elected elsewhere under relatively benign governments. Wales is not safe in the Union. (And there is a good case to say people living in England are a lot less safer than they think they are.)

So in conclusion, I think this book should be required reading for anyone with views for or against annibyniaeth. It's level-headed, reasonably argued, succinct and accessible. And very compelling. 

Book of the Month: The Poverty of Growth

I picked this up because it intrigued me when I saw it in the half price section of my favourite bookshop - and when better to buy a book on economics than when it's half price?

The author, Olivier de Schutter, is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. If you don't know what that means, neither did I. Basically, it means the UN Human Rights Council regard him as an independent expert on a given topic. He has previously been a special rapporteur on the right to food and also worked for the International Federation for Human Rights.

This book persuasively attacks the pervading political obsession with "growth" as the only economic metric that matters. Olivier says that still may be the case for nations with undeveloped infrastructures and economies, but for the developed world it is disastrous on many levels and leading swiftly to irreversible damage to the environment. 

'Growthism' is the belief that growing GDP is the way to reduce poverty. However, this belief seems misguided, based on the evidence of what is actually happening in the world. 

Instead, Olivier mainly takes aim at wealth inequality, which he regards as the main cause for poverty in the developed world, and is mainly due to the doctrine of growthism. Deregulated economic growth in the developing world is also fueling wealth inequity and actively contributing to extreme poverty in many countries.

Equity is an alternative metric for measuring economic "success". 'Growth' doesn't deliver better lives for the majority of people, unless it is very carefully directed in ways designed to limit extreme wealth and make sure all the benefits of growth are shared equally. Otherwise people just end up working harder, for less money in real terms, and in less stable employment.

A 'post-growth' approach is outlined focusing on key friction points in the economy such as energy use and food. Olivier is quite clear - inequity leads to poverty, inefficiency and environmental degradation. 

It's a compelling case and hard to argue against. It certainly made me think differently about 'the economy' and how it's talked about in the media.

Book of the Month: Rebecca's Country

The 'Rebecca Riots' in south-west Wales in the 1840s have always fascinated me - the theatre of the piece, men dressing as women to disguise themselves, converging in the dead of night on toll-gates and smashing them to pieces, with the group leader designated as 'Rebecca' all seems fantastical. It's a credit to historian Rhian E. Jones, that she manages to write a solidly-researched and grounded account of the events with a story-tellers grace that loses none of the theatre. 

The Rebecca Riots weren't just riots. It was a multi-faceted popular uprising against a series of injustices perpetrated by the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless. There were some actual riots, including the storming of the Carmarthen workhouse, but most of the actions were carefully planned and targeted attacks that dismantled the apparatus of oppression - the toll gates - while retaining sympathy among the wider population. 

And there is some story to tell. These mobs featured hundred of individuals, led by a 'Rebecca', sometimes accompanied by her daughters. The origins of her name are unknown and there are a few plausible theories. Rebecca and her followers struck in the middle of the night. And they carried on taking down toll gates and toll houses even as thousands of armed troops were billeted across Carmarthenshire to try and snuff out a rebellion that even troubled Queen Victoria and the ministers of the Crown in far off London. 

Rhian takes a scholars eye to paint a compelling picture of what life was like in rural, yet cosmopolitan, south west Wales. Carmarthen was a large and important market town. The many farms and manors around it were considered idyllic and peaceful. So, for a movement that upset social conventions - with "women" leading the fray - as much as it upset the political status quo to erupt here of all places really shook up the wider establishment in the UK. The 'peaceable' Welsh were causing mayhem and that scared the people in power. 

It's quite clear from the way the book is framed that Rhian Jones sympathises with the righteousness of the Rebeccaites cause, although she stops short of explicitly approving of their methods. It's hard not to read this book and feel on Rebecca's side. But Rhian is very fair-handed writing about the land-owners,  magistrates and generals trying to stop the chaos. She is also greatly helped by the columns written by a Times journalist who became embedded in the Rebecca movement and was thus able to explore the grievances and motivations of the people in real time - this was probably one of the earliest pieces of journalism from a 'front line' in a conflict. 

Rhian also avoids the temptation to draw any direct parallels with current politics or contemporary issues. Those would quickly render this story out of date; instead I think this book will remain relevant. The story of how the movement lost momentum, became the locus for bad faith actors who turned it to their own criminal advantage, and eventually petered out when some limited reforms were introduced is, in it's own way, timeless. 

Rhian's conclusion, though, was something I found inspiring: "The extent of their success is perhaps less important than the fact that they made the attempt." That is the key to why the mysterious Rebecca and her followers are remembered at all. 

Book of the Month: The Girl Who Speaks Bear

This book by Sophie Anderson was in a stack we were sorting through in our front room. Cathy isn't sure where she picked it up originally. The illustrations (by Kathrin Honesta) caught my eye and when I opened it, I saw it was a book with a map in the front. I'm a sucker for books with maps in the front. So I thought I would give it a go and added it to my 'to read' pile. 

Cathy has told me she wants to read the book too, so I am going to try and keep this as spoiler-free as possible. It's set in a Russian-esque setting -  snow and woods and various anglicised Russian words dropped into the text. There is a glossary of those words in the back, presumably to help younger readers as this is a 'young adult' book.

The story itself is interspersed with short fairy tales, but overall is a fairly standard quest in search of answers and gathering friends to help you along the way. The central character is a girl called Yanka, who is tall and strong and feels like she doesn't really belong in the village where she is growing up. And that's mainly because she doesn't really belong. She's a foundling and, as she becomes aware of that and starts to wonder about where she really comes from, she finds out that a lot of folk tales she has been told have personal significance for her. 

Other books on the back cover

Sophie Anderson has written some other books drawing on a similar Russian folk tale backdrop, and it felt like some of the other characters, like the yaga witches in their living house, appeared without much of an introduction because they have featured in other books. That was a bit odd.

I thought there was a lot to like about this book. Some of the descriptions and metaphors are beautifully done. The setting tends to work. However, overall I struggled to get into the book. Yanka's internal monologue gets a bit tiring at times as she picks over the different stories she hears and tries to fathom the truth in them. I'm glad I persevered as the pace picked up towards the end and I ended up wanting to know how the story ended. 

Book of the Month: The long way to a small angry planet

I really enjoyed reading this book, the debut science fiction novel by Becky Chambers published a decade ago after the author used a crowdfunder to help her finish it. I picked a good time to read it. I'd just slogged my way through another science fiction book that was tedious and disappointing (and will not be appearing in one of these book of the month posts) so this was the perfect pick-me-up to restore my faith in science-fiction. As ever some mild spoilers may follow!

It's quite a simple story. A spaceship crew that constructs hyperspace lanes receives a government contract to travel deep into new territory and build one end of a new wormhole. Most of the book is about this journey to the small angry planet that is the new construction site. There are various stops and surprises along the way but eventually they get to their destination ready to carry out the work. And then things don't go according to plan.

I really like the idea of a motley crew trogging through space on a beat up old spaceship. It worked in the Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it worked in The Expanse series, it worked on Firefly, Farscape and my favourite ship in Star Wars was always the Millennium Falcon. It's a trope that I enjoy. 

And Chambers' crew was a little bit different. It's an inter-species, majority-human crew. The alien races are decently drawn and have their own alien view of the universe. If anything it's the humans that are a bit stereotypical - from the ditzy, messy, super-smart, slightly ADHD mechanic, through to the newbie in the crew who acts as a foil for introducing all the other members. However, the humans are distant from Earth, which has succumbed to ecological failure. They are part of the 'Exodus' and that makes them a little bit different and alien too. 

One departure from other books like this is it's not a wild west novel set in Space. There are some violent and dangerous situations, but none of the crew carries or is particularly comfortable with guns. One encounter puts the crew in jeopardy but they negotiate their way out of it using their knowledge of how their alien aggressors think. I really liked that about the book. It doesn't just resort to shooting. "There are alternatives to fighting," to borrow a phrase from another franchise. 

And lots of things happen. All the characters have a range of personal challenges but they all get resolved quickly and it's on to the next weird encounter or problem that needs solving. Nothing gets dwelt on for too long and yet, still. the resolutions to issues are thoughtful and thought-provoking. There are insights into how organic intelligences interact with machine intelligences, comparative morality, reflections on whether warlike races deserve to survive, and how capitalism courts chaos often to the detriment of the many. (The whole wormhole entrance construction project has more cons than pros.)

I like books that make me think without making my head hurt. 

I noticed on the cover of this book that it has won an award for best series - and I liked it so much I asked for the series set as a birthday present. I'm very grateful to Connor for buying them for me! 

No doubt there will be more Book of the Month reviews set in this universe to follow!

Book of the Month: The List of Suspicious Things

An early 'book of the month' this month because I had already finished reading this by the end of last month for one very simple reason: it was that good I tore through it on one of my return train trips to London, starting it somewhere just outside Cardiff on the way there and finishing it somewhere between Newport and Cardiff on the way back!

And also a shout out to whoever designed this book cover because this delightful scruffy crow on the cover, pilfering milk from a doorstep delivery caught my eye while on a wander in Griffin Books in Penarth. So I picked it up, read the back cover summary and thought 'hmmm'. Although - spoiler alert - crows don't feature much in the book. 

This is a fictionalised semi-memoir that carries a ring of authenticity heavily swirled in nostalgia. It is loosely based on Jennie Godfrey's own experience of growing up in Yorkshire during the early 1980s when Peter Sutcliffe, who was branded the Yorkshire Ripper by the press, murdered multiple young women. 

The two best friends in the story - Miv (Mavis) and Sharon - are drawn to the horror that starts overshadowing everyday life and follow the police's advice to look out for suspicious things. They start to create a list of things - and men - they think are suspicious. And along the way their investigations uncover a whole heap of other secrets in the lives of the adults around them.

It's a very engaging story and remains believable right up to the very end. I was worried that the story might turn silly with Miv and Sharon catching, or just encountering, the Ripper. But that doesn't happen. There is enough drama going on without fabricating that. Although it turns out there is a connection between Miv and the Ripper, based on the author's own childhood connection which meant she was just one step removed from the Ripper in real life. 

I have one very minor criticism: there are some slightly heavy-handed nostalgia drops into the text. As someone roughly the same age as the author I recognised the descriptions of certain fads and fashions and how particular brands were the must have thing among teenagers but the name checks amused me. I also recognised the freedom I had as a child, as Miv and Sharon head out after school on adventures with no phones, just an understanding they would be back for tea. 

Many of the secrets that Miv and Sharon uncover have very deep themes - loss, betrayal, unhappy marriages, child abuse, mental illness and racism. The girls grow up as they learn more about the people living around them, and while most of the characters have a happyish ending, several do not. There's a real emotional punch to the conclusion to the story, which shows how much it drew me in.

It's to the author's credit that there are no absolute villains, just hurt and broken people hurting and breaking other people. There's a deep underlying sadness for communities that are shifting sideways as the manufacturing industries abruptly shut down and despair kicks in, with some people kicking out in response and wounding others in the process. It's as much a nostalgic tribute to those disappearing mill towns as to the author's own family and childhood. 

This is the first book I've read this year that I would whole-heartedly recommend. I'm very glad the eye-catching rascal of a crow on the cover made me pick it up!

Book of the Month: Football Wizard - The Billy Meredith Story

This autobiography had been sat on my footie books bookshelf for a while so I have a sense of satisfaction to have finally read it. There's a personal family connection with Billy Meredith because he played for Wales alongside my Great Uncle Tommy Matthias either side of the First World War.

I knew that Billy and Tommy were both in the Wales team that beat England for the very first time, in a British Home Championship game at Highbury in 1920. What I didn't know, until this past week in fact, was that Billy played in Tommy's benefit game for a "Wrexham and Welsh XI" in 1922. (I found this out from Anthony, a new contact via a vintage sports collecting group, who specialises in Wrexham's history.)

Billy was a fascinating character at a time when football was emerging as the sport of the masses. There is a great scene-setting chapter explaining how coal miners in the Black Park Colliery in Chirk, where Billy worked as a young man, would leave the pits at the end of the shift and go straight to watch - or play - football without even washing the coal dust off. Billy lived in Chirk and commuted to Manchester to play and train until he was offered a contract as a professional footballer. 

His upbringing wasn't conducive to playing football for a living. His religious parents thought it was a silly pursuit. His dad apparently only ever attended one game where Billy was playing, and reportedly was unimpressed. Despite this, Billy soon made a name for himself at Chirk - they won the Welsh Cup in 1894. The next year he was playing for Manchester City, and soon helped them win promotion to the First Division and then their first FA Cup win.

He was then involved in a scandal, when he was accused of trying to bribe the captain of Aston Villa to throw a match. His punishment was a lengthy ban from football. When he returned to playing, he was in the colours of Manchester United where he was part of the team that were League Champions for the first time in 1907 and then won the title again with them in 1911. In between those league titles was another FA Cup win. He also played in the first Charity Shield match, and was on the winning side.

Billy felt doubly hard done by with regards to the match-fixing scandal. Firstly, he felt he was unfairly treated due to being Welsh and that an English player wouldn't have been censured so severely. Secondly, he felt his club let him down badly and didn't have his back. Throughout his career he got into arguments with his clubs, often revolving around money. He was a big champion of the 'Player's Union' but this wasn't motivated by solidarity as much as feeling players weren't being paid enough when they were the reason people came to football matches. 

The author, John Harding, is pretty even-handed in how he writes about this. One can sense that Billy was a spiky fellow, with a focus on money that probably stemmed from his relatively poor upbringing. But there are several times when it seems like Billy let his pride guide him into rows that he could have avoided if he'd had a bit more nous.

But Billy was a superstar - as it evidenced by how he drew a crowd whenever he played in a testimonial, benefit or charity game. His was usually the name on the adverts for the game.  He tried his hand at endorsing products, set up a sporting goods store, and even appeared in a film playing a version of himself as a trainer and mentor to an aspiring footballer. Sadly, that film doesn't survive. He was regularly depicted in newspaper cartoons, which always included his trademark toothpick. 

Billy's professional career stretched over 30 years, although with a chunk of it lost to the First World War, when he played in several wartime league games. After the war he was back playing for Wales and for Manchester City and continued playing into the 1920s. 

If I was going to be critical of this book, it does rely a bit too much on reports in newspapers and magazines, particularly the Athletic News. This is a common problem faced by a lot of football writers; the story can just become a string of results and match summaries. The book could have done with a list of the honours that Billy won. It's also a bit annoying that some team photos have the players identified and some don't. I'm certain that one of the team photos includes my Great Uncle, but it's not confirmed in the book.

Tommy Matthias circled

Those are really quite minor quibbles. An updated version of this book has been published and some of those issues might have been dealt with. Overall this was a fascinating and enjoyable glimpse into the early days of soccer and I learned a lot from it. 

Book of the Month: Project Hail Mary

This book was a lend from Bryan and Elaine, both of whom had read it and suggested I read it too. It's written by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, which I haven't read but I have watched the film adaptation starring Matt Damon. As ever, mild spoilers follow. 

The basic gist of the story is that the sun is dying, like a lot of other stars in the local neighbourhood. However, one star seems immune, so an international project is put together to launch a spaceship to that star, Tau Ceti, to try and find out why that star isn't dimming like the sun and other nearby stars. The spaceship is called the Hail Mary, a reference to a last gasp attempt at scoring in American Football, and possibly in other sports. Hence, Project Hail Mary.

The main protagonist - Ryland Grace - is a discredited scientist working as a high school teacher, who is called up to the project due to his discredited work now having some functional application in investigating the crisis caused by the sun's diminishing energy output. Just a note here - "Hail Mary, full of Grace" is the first line of the rosary chant said by Catholics as penance or invocation. So, a character called Grace on the Hail Mary spaceship? That wasn't an accident. I have a feeling Andy Weir felt well chuffed with himself when he came up with that. 

The Hail Mary reaches Tau Ceti and discovers another spaceship already there. It's an alien ship, sent by another race seeking answers to the same problem - why is their sun dying? Grace and the alien pilot, who he nicknames Rocky, seek to work together to try and find a solution to the threat to both their worlds. 

There is plenty of humour in the interactions between Grace and Rocky, particularly when it comes to explaining certain human and alien bodily functions. The idea of trying to explain sleep to an alien was amusing - "I can't imagine explaining 'sleep' to someone who has never heard of it. Hey, I'm going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can't do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No cause for concern."

But it turns out Rocky does understand sleep and there is a whole alien cultural tradition around it that I thought was very cute and a bit sad. Still, Grace's description of it made me laugh. 

The technology and science in the book felt reasonably plausible, even if the international cooperation on the mission seemed very far-fetched. Grace and Rocky have to do a lot of problem-solving and those problems are all worked out in more detail than was necessary. At some points there are some jarring bits of prose. The author has a bad habit of name-checking certain things like using "Excel spreadsheets", when he could have just used a generic word like 'database' for when Grace started to translate Rocky's communication. 

I wondered if it was product placement for Microsoft, or whether it was designed to impress the readership, like we are meant to think 'ooh, the astronaut must be clever, he's using Excel!' But I was sceptical about how quickly Grace was able to work out communication with Rocky, so maybe there was some magic in his using Excel after all. 

Another jarring aspect of Grace's first person narration is the way he interchanges metric and imperial measurements and then comments on it, pointing out that this is an annoying result of being brought up in America. It would have been fine if he only mentioned it once, but by about the third time it got irritating - yes, we get it, Americans have a quirky way of using both measurement systems. But, so do people from the UK. And nobody cares. I almost felt like the author had to make reference to it to deflect criticism for having a scientist using both sets of measurements. 

But, having said that, Grace isn't a heroic figure setting out to save the world. He is a reluctant participant in the mission, a man thrust into an unexpected situation and doing his best not to mess it up. He carries the huge burden of being humanity's last chance of survival and maybe he can be forgiven for obsessing about whether he should be calculating measurements in centimetres or inches as he takes us through his story. 

As science-fiction stories go, there is an air of hope to this book. Even our current climate change and rising planetary temperature crisis turns out alright in the end, because it buys humanity a few more years when the sun starts to get dimmer. As the first human to encounter an alien being, Grace goes beyond being an ambassador and instead becomes a partner in a relationship focused on saving both worlds. It makes a change from alien contact stories that focus more on fear and aggression. 

However, at the same time, the positive nature of the book has a dark side. Faced with the climate crisis, it's hard to see where a 'Hail Mary' will come from, and the idea of international cooperation to save the planet feels like it will remain only possible in a work of fiction. 

Book of the Month: making a foray into the Cthulhu mythos

I have wanted to read some of HP Lovecraft's stories for some time. Last year I noticed several different collections from different publishers appearing on the shelves in TK Maxx. I didn't buy any of them, but I did add this collection to my wish-list and received it as a Christmas present. 

This collection is by Oxford University Press, published in their 'World Classics' series. There are nine stories included along with an introduction and detailed footnotes for each tale. All nine stories have been selected for their connection with the 'Cthulhu mythos', the wider world constructed across multiple stories relating to ancient creatures and races that live in more remote parts of the world. 

The term 'Cthulhu mythos' was coined after Lovecraft's death and takes its name from The Call of Cthulhu, wherein various people around the world dream of a horrific ancient entity called Cthulhu that 'sleeps' at the bottom of the ocean in a drowned city. It is probably the most famous of Lovecraft's creations with role-playing games and other activities drawing on the character.

But Cthulhu isn't the only lurking evil being in these stories, nor is it the most powerful or sinister. In fact, across the stories there are three or four different races, some older than Cthulhu, some at war with Cthulhu's kin. All of them come from other planets, galaxies or even universes, and all are much, much older than the human race. 

The introduction begins with a warning that is contains spoilers, so I skipped it and read the stories first before going back to it. (Does that make it an outroduction?) I didn't look up all the footnotes as I read the stories because doing that was time-consuming. However, I did read many of them and learned plenty of interesting details. 

Two big things about Lovecraft's writing relate to his use of 'sources'. He frequently lists obscure books full or arcane and occult lore, and name-checks those books created by contemporary authors of 'weird fiction' in their stories. At other times his protagonists consult lists of actual, real books, which are usually just a list of key writings that were listed in his encyclopaedia. Meanwhile, some of his stories were inspired by events that were happening at the time - the discovery of Pluto, for example, which becomes a home for one of his alien races.

I found the stories a bit of a mixed bag. They all follow a similar formula, with a build up by the protagonist who tells you that he has witnessed a terrible horror, so terrible he's not sure if he can tell you anything about it, but he may as well tell you because it's so horribly terrible and terribly horrible you won't believe him anyway. Then the story starts and sometimes it rattles along to a conclusion and sometimes it doesn't. The Dunwich Horror has a spectacularly poor non-ending.

But there are a couple of stories that do end well. The Whisperer in Darkness made me go 'ugh' and shudder at the end. The Shadow Over Innsmouth took an unexpected turn and ended in a way I really didn't expect. Shadow also included a tense escape for the protagonist, which was one of the few scenes that properly drew me in to the story. 

Another formulaic aspect is the way characters always seem to luckily find a talkative shop clerk or town drunk, or crazy coot from up in the hills, who will reel off several pages of exposition. Or someone will write a letter outlining several important plot points. Or, in the most contrived sequence, the Great Old Ones themselves will leave behind a series of gigantic wall friezes that provide a full history of their culture and the life-cycle of the abandoned city the characters are exploring. 

Locations vary with action taking place Antarctica and Australia, as well as places Lovecraft knew well on the east coast of the USA. Several stories take place in Massachusetts, with the fictional town of Arkham, loosely based on Salem, featuring prominently. Lovecraft paints Massachusetts as an antiquarian place, steeped in history and secrets. 

Another feature of Lovecraft's stories is his love of adjectives. Almost every description of what the protagonists are discovering is weighed down by adjectives, and he uses the same ones repeatedly. He really loved the word 'Cyclopean' to describe the temples and cities his characters discover; large dressed stones are 'Cyclopean blocks' in every story where there is a ruin. 

While Lovecraft was good at building tension and describing mysterious events with a suitable amount of dread, I've already mentioned how he often failed to stick the landing. Several of his stories end with mere hints of monsters sort of off-screen. In the introduction there is a funny comment by a critic who was very dismissive of Lovecraft's stories, saying that after wading through all the adjectives, you wanted something better than people running away from "an invisible whistling octopus". It's a fair comment and it really made me laugh.

Overall, reading this collection made me realise why HP Lovecraft is considered so important as one of the pioneers of the genre of 'weird fiction'. His Cthulhu mythos has taken on a life of its own, elevating his status as a writer and ensuring he has left a mark on popular culture. It's a huge legacy. Cyclopean, even. 

Book of the Month: To The Lighthouse

I feel self conscious reviewing "classics". I worry I'm not 'getting it' and will look ignorant. But then, I also feel that if I'm not getting it, that says something too. So, here we go. Bear with me. 

There are some spoilers in this review. But this book was published in 1927, so you've had 98 years to read it before reading my spoilers. 

What I knew before reading the book - it was written by Virginia Woolf, a female author often described as a key feminist writer. No surprise then that To The Lighthouse is written almost exclusively through the point of view of female protagonists, mainly Mrs Ramsay, the mother of eight who narrates the first chunk of the book. Male characters are given short shrift, variously described as shallow, prickly, idealistic, boastful and with sensitive egos. 

The story starts with Mr and Mrs Ramsay on holiday on the Isle of Skye with their eight children and another half dozen assorted guests plus serving staff. It's evening. One of Mrs Ramsay's sons asks her if they can go to the lighthouse the next day. Mr Ramsay says no because the weather forecast is bad. Mrs Ramsay is silently annoyed at her husband for dismissively crushing her son's hopes. 

That takes up the first sixty pages. I was beginning to suspect the title was misleading and the family weren't going to go to the lighthouse. 

There was, however, a surprise reference to Cardiff - as a venue where Mr Ramsay was going to take his lecture tour. So, it wasn't all unspoken angst between the married couple. 

Mrs Ramsay oscillates between a dark pessimism about marriage and progeny, and then expends a lot of energy engineering opportunities for her house guests to get together. There is a proposal as two people are successfully coupled, and then she is on to thinking about the next match she could make. 

I had my hackles raised by some passing references to Anna Karenina. Fortunately Mrs Ramsay stands in stark contrast to Anna. For one thing, Mrs Ramsay seems much more realistic about life and finds joy in the things around her instead of mooning away over some idea that love is "out there".

And then, just when we've got to know Mrs Ramsay, she unexpectedly dies, in a throwaway paragraph at the end of a chapter. I don't know if the author got bored of her, or what. But it's a sudden - and bold - shift in the story. 

What follows is a brief series of vignettes, as the local cleaning lady tries to maintain the holiday home over several years. In the same way that the house declines, so too, Mrs Ramsay's idealised visions of the future are shown to come to naught. One son Andrew, who was supposed to become a famous mathematician, is killed by a shell during the war. A daughter, Prue, who is supposed to grow into a true beauty, dies due to pregnancy complications. The couple who got engaged on Skye get trapped in a loveless marriage. 

The message seems to be that whatever our hopes for the future, life gets in the way. It's pessimistic in the extreme and more nihilistic than I expected. 

The book ends with the remaining members of the family returning to Skye. The kid who wanted to go to the lighthouse finally gets to go, even though by this point he is a pouting teenager who really doesn't want to go. They arrive at the lighthouse but before they get out of the boat the book ends. 

Final point - the cover art. This book was part of a set of ten 'classics' that I was given several years ago. The cover art is deeply uninspiring, although after I read the book it felt very apt. (It doesn't show a lighthouse!) Then a few days after I finished the book, I saw a copy with a very different, and much nicer, cover that makes it look like a completely different type of book! 

(I was tempted to buy it but decided that would be silly.)

Book of the Month - Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody

This is a book aimed at teenagers, but when I saw it in my favourite local bookshop (Griffin Books in Penarth) I was attracted to the illustrations. The one on the back (below) really made me laugh. So I decided to buy it, justifying it by telling myself that it's worth checking in on books written for a different demographic sometimes. 

Something about this made me giggle in the shop

Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody is written by Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls, which I read years ago just before I watched the big screen adaptation (review of the movie included here). The illustrations, which are the main reason I decided I wanted the book, are by Tim Miller. The drawings inside aren't all as charming as the ones on the cover, however I enjoyed having a few pictures alongside the story.

The protagonist of the book is Zeke, the titular lizard nobody, who with his two lizard friends, attends a school full of other animals. They are the only lizards who go and even though they are monitor lizards it is JUST A COINCIDENCE that they are asked to be hall monitors in the school. This is communicated to them in ALL CAPS. But the lizards are sceptical. 

There is also a bully in the school, a pelican called Pelicarnassus, whose mother is a supervillain. Zeke also has a very odd affliction. the result of a family curse, to contend with. But this being a Patrick Ness story, the real struggle isn't with the son of a supervillain or the daft annoyance of the curse. There are in fact two other very big themes within the book.

Firstly, the lizards are from the poorer end of town and are therefore outsiders in the school. It's not laid on too thick, but there's a racialist element to the way the lizards aren't included by the majority. I felt that could springboard some interesting conversations with teenagers. 

The second big theme is dealing with loss and post-loss trauma. Zeke comes from a one-parent home following bereavement and his mother is overtaken by grief and depression. So Zeke has to deal with something he doesn't know how to deal with, and, honestly, it's heart-breaking. Similar to A Monster Calls, Patrick successfully captures the reality of living through a shit situation and aching for things to change, without caring if it's better or worse, just wanting something different. 

I wasn't really expecting that theme to come through so strongly. Like I said at the start, sometimes it's worth reading a book that's not aimed at you. It can still resonate. 

There was also an excellent piece of wisdom that I think will be helpful to anyone navigating social situations. Zeke has a confrontation where someone calls him fat. While unpleasant, he considers the following

"...anyone who made fun of someone else's appearance like that immediately lost the argument; if you called someone "fat", then that didn't say much about the so-called "fat" person, but it said a lot about you." (p.99)

I know that probably isn't going to take all the sting out of being made fun of for anyone, but it's still a very good principle to take on board. Later, in another encounter with a mean character, Zeke reflects that when they say things about you that are true, then, again, they aren't telling you anything you don't know, but they are revealing the kind of person they are. 

So, there was plenty packed in this short book aimed at people a lot younger than me. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's a hint there might be a sequel on the way at the end and I will be keeping a lizard-like beady eye out for that.