THE CHANGING MAN

Unsettling rumours swirl in the privileged halls of Nithercott Academy. Students are disappearing and if they return at all, they’re uncannily changed.

As figures lurk in the shadows, watching and waiting, new student Ife will do whatever it takes to survive.

But when the scales of power are tipped against you, what is the cost of fighting back?

*sigh* where do I even start with this? 🥴

(First of all, I actually got this book while someone else was after it. When I put it on the counter, the sales assistant looked at it for a minute and was like… “there it is.” He then told me another employee had been frantically searching for it for a customer, but couldn’t find it because I’d been walking around the shop with it. I could have missed out! Now I wish she’d got to it first.)

You might look at that cover and think “ooh spooky!” Because I certainly did. But it isn’t. I also thought it was YA, but it isn’t that, either. It’s actually a children’s book, even though the characters are 16/17, but that’s fine too, because kids’ books can still be creepy, and I mean, just look at the cover!

Ife Adebola is a new student of Nithercott School as part of their Urban Achievers Programme. As one of the few black students there, and not being financially well off, she doesn’t feel as though she fits in with the other students. She also misses her best friend, Zanna, who she can’t contact when her phone gets confiscated. (And yes, you’ll wonder why she doesn’t use the School’s internal facetime system to contact Zanna like she does her parents, but that would be a glaring plot hole so we won’t talk about that).

As luck would have it, another Urban Achiever, Bijal, is determined to befriend her, not respecting the fact Ife doesn’t want anything to do with her, and pissing me off in the process because she just won’t leave well enough alone. She even has the audacity to claim Ife makes everything about her, and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. To which Ife replies:

You’re the one who chose to try and make me your friend any way possible. That’s not how friendships happen, Bee. You can’t make people like you. It’s suffocating!

And I was like yes! You tell her, Ife. And I hoped she’d be rid of her for good and leave it at that, but no. We get a very sudden turn around from Ife, and then they’re mates. Bijal reads horoscopes and looks into conspiracy theories, but won’t believe in The Changing Man as a supernatural being.

Ife and Bijal also befriend Ben, whose brother mysteriously disappeared during the prologue, and who Ben has been trying to find ever since. And you’d think the serious nature of a missing sibling would make a character sullen and distracted, and for the first five minutes he is, but the rest of the time he’s played off as a silly boy who’s a little odd, and keeps strange things in his pockets. Like he’s the younger version of Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter. He’s also called “Intellectually intimidating” by the booksmart Bijal, despite the fact that during the prologue, he was texting his brother to help him cheat in his English assignment. At least unlike the gaslighting Bijal, Ben has a nice word to say for Ife, calling her ‘determined and brave,’ though what he’s basing that on, I’ve no idea.

In part, because Ife suffers from anxiety, and I could believe that’s what makes her stutter at the start of almost every sentence, if only she was the only one who did it. And speaking of repetitive behaviours… Ben smirks. All the time, and especially at his ‘friends’ Ife and Bijal, which I found an odd writing choice from Oyemakinde. Smirking is usually a negative response, so it reads as if he’s looking down on, or laughing at them.

Ife’s interest in anything Changing Man related begins when one of her only friends at the school, Malika, begins behaving oddly. Choosing to hang out with girls she’d made fun of before and taking all her earrings out. I think that’s it. To be honest, as an inciting incident, it’s a pretty weak one. I don’t think we saw enough of Malika in the book to warrant it having that much of an impact on Ife. She’s supposedly so concerned about Malika, but there’s only a brief exchange about nothing serious, where she doesn’t show any concern…then nothing. She’s not even background noise for the rest of the book.

I got so bored reading The Changing Man, that I was tempted to DNF. The premise was interesting, but bore little resemblance to what you actually get. The plot starts to move forward toward the end (the point at which you’re already bored silly) but that’s where it really feels like a kids’ book. There’s a villain who, out of nowhere, starts speaking in rhyme, bad guys who get taken out by pickle juice, of all things, stupid flower names, and a blatant ripoff of Animorphs.

The pacing throughout is slow, with no atmosphere or creepy setting to make up for it, and I can’t believe anyone in the children’s age group would find this engaging. As an example, here’s the type of description you get.

To my left there are stairs. We climb them and reach a shallow tunnel opening. Walking through, we come out into a forest of shrubbery dappled with colour. Out ahead is a black door with golden details. It stands freely with nothing seemingly around it. There’s a rustle to my left.

Wow. Engaging.

On the writing style the word ‘glorious’ gets said by at least three different characters, there are at least five instances of missing full stops, one instance of two commas used consecutively, and for an English writer writing about English characters…American words?? (Yams, bangs, and cotton candy). There’s also a page where Ife kicks off her shoes, and then on THE VERY NEXT PAGE, she kicks off her shoes. And for the love of god, if a character frowns, just say that! Someone ‘squishing their eyebrows together’ sounds cute and different the first time, but not every time, and from every character.

The beginning of The Changing Man had the tiniest hint of One Of Us Is Lying with a passing resemblance to The Loop, and inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and Animorphs, clearly). But The Changing Man wasn’t creepy or suspenseful. If you want that, read The Call.

I’d been excited to read this one for Halloween, but the only spooky element came from the cover. It was slow, boring, and a struggle to get through.

NETTLE AND BONE

After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince, Marra – the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter – has finally realised that no one is coming to their rescue. No one, except for Marra herself.

Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a Prince – if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of prince’s, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former Knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the Prince and frees Marra’s family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.

(For anyone who has read/plans to read this book, let’s just be honest with ourselves and admid we bought it for the demonic chicken.) But just look at that cover! So autumnal. Very much ‘stepping-into-halloween.’ And probably the best part of the book, if I’m honest. So congrats to Natasha MacKenzie for getting another sale in the bag for Kingfisher. This is also my very first T. Kingfisher book! (and I quite like the sound of Thornhedge, so might give that a go at some point).

Nettle and Bone begins with the first few chapters using a dual timeline with a flashback that went on for so long, I forgot what was happening in the present day. The present timeline begins with Marra in a place known as the Blistered Land, a cursed and dangerous wasteland home to some unfortunate people and a few angry cannibals, and she’s there to make a dog of bones as part of her three impossible tasks. It’s an intriguing setting and a promising start, but we never find out how or why the curse has happened, and it’s never mentioned again.

The past storyline explores Marra’s upbringing as a princess, being the youngest of three sisters, and seeing said sisters married off, both to the same Prince, after her eldest sister dies. Marra ends up at a convent where she helps the apothecary in matters of childbirth and to me, and the whole thing had me thinking of The Handmaid’s Tale, which is a book/theme I’m not keen on (so not a great start) but it lends itself to the darker side of fantasy that the cover depicts, so it had a lot of promise.

And then, similar to Stephen King’s Fairytale, there’s a change of tone a few chapters in as the book shifts into a slightly dull, run-of-the-mill YA fantasy novel.

Marra is on a quest to save her sister Kania from a cruel Prince (not that one) who’s protected by magic, and can’t be killed. She’s joined by the grumpy old dust-wife who’d set her the impossible tasks, a pleasant, scatty, yet helpful fairy godmother, (both of whom do more for the plot than Marra) and a Knight without a place to call home, and who is shamefully underused as a character. Such wasted potential! (The plot touches on the beginnings of a blossoming romance between the two, but I just didn’t feel it). Most of this section of the novel is on the road, and you’ll wonder why no one thought to pack any FOOD I swear to god, the incompetence. They have a former knight and a savvy dust-wife, yet no one thought to pack a sandwhich?? (And people call Marra the slow one!)

Speaking of Marra, she didn’t seem all that fleshed out to me. I thought I’d be getting a Princess Fiona type of princess, but she’s barely a princess except in name (a fact we’re constantly reminded of, lest we forget). She’s defined by her relationship to her sisters, and she knits. (I know people pick holes in the fact she’s thirty, saying she’s too immature, but we see early on as a young child she only has an innocent understanding of the world, and then gets shipped off to a convent where interaction with the outside world is minimal at best. Not really fair to compare her to modern day 30 year olds of the real world, is it?) I will say it’s refreshing to have an author give us a main character who’s more reserved and a little more dependent on others than most. There are people like that in the world, after all, but as a result, she has no agency beyond being the person who sets things in motion. Most is left up to the expertise of her new friends, while she tags along for the ride in an emotional panic.

I feel the story would have worked so much better had Kingfisher switched the two sisters and we had Kania as the youngest, going out to save Marra from the Prince, with a steadfast plan, and sandwiches.

I found the pacing a bit sluggish, and there wasn’t a real sense of buildup to anything. In part, because they weren’t met with any real difficulties. Where Marra was the inciting incident, the rest of them were easily the deus ex machina (though not as much as that saint from the goblin market!) Speaking of – chapter eighteen was the only one that sparked any interest. The unexplored Blistered Land, chapter eighteen. Those are the highlights.

Overall…the book was fine. It was a little disjointed in tone and not as dark as I would have liked, but an easy read. Albeit an underwhelming one. The impossible tasks should have comprised the majority of the plot, not glossed over during the opening chapters, and the goblin market felt so out of place, but there was some good characterisation from the dust-wife and the fairy godmother. But I wanted more from the demon chicken. You could put Nettle and Bone in the same category as The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry (and make of that what you will), and if you liked one, there’s a good chance you’d like the other.

And why is it even called Nettle and Bone? Barely relevant.

2/5

WHOSE BODY?

It was the body of a tall stout man. On his dead face, a handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked death with grotesque elegance.

The body wore nothing else.

Lord Peter Wimsey knew immediately what the corpse was supposed to be. His problem was to find out whose body had found its way into Mr Alfred Thripps’ Battersea bathroom.

And we begin with the words of Peter Wimsey himself:

A strange corpse doesn’t turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime – at least, I should think not – at any rate, the number of times it’s happened, with a pince-nez, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine.

Twice. That’s how many times I’ve read about a body in a bath wearing nothing but a pince-nez. I wonder what Sayers made of Gladys Mitchell borrowing a a hefty chunk of her premise for her own book, Speedy Death. Both works their debut novels, and both writers members of the (crime writers club?) But Dorothy got in their first, having written Whose Body six years earlier, in 1923. One hundred years ago! Hard to think the 1920s were that long ago…but the perfect time to read Whose Body?, to mark its centenary.

Our sleuth is the easy-going, fun-loving aritocrat Lord Peter Wimsey, who splits his time between his two interests – collecting rare books, and solving crimes. Unlike a lot of novels that introduce you to someone who is, quite literally, the amateur detective, it’s already established that Peter has been involved in solving crimes for some time, and does it for fun.

‘It’s a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it – up to a point.’

Whose Body? Sees Peter called in to help find out the identity of an unknown murdered man in a bath, while another man has gone missing. Bunter, Peter’s manservant, is Alfred to his Batman, doing all the household stuff, while helping him in his crime solving exploits, along with a helpful, sensible detective by the name of Parker. (That’s right, try reading the names Peter and Parker in quick succession and not think of Spider-Man). And there’s a touching moment between Peter and Bunter when Peter suffers the effects of shell-shock, and Bunter, who we learn was a sergeant during the war, consoles him.

I liked Peter’s easygoing nature and his close friendships with Bunter, and his equally inquisitive mother. Though she’s one of those relatives who say things out loud that should probably be kept to herself. Case in point, here she is describing the lower classes.

‘And what unfinished-looking faces they have – so characteristic, I always think, of the lower middle-class, rather like sheep, or calves’ head (boiled, I mean).’

Yikes! And thank god she clarified they made her think of boiled animal heads. Really salting the wound. 😅

I like how Sayers has Peter and Bunter go through their interrogations. Unlike other crime novels I could name *cough* The Festival Murders *cough* they don’t throw question after question at potential suspects like they’re filling in a questionnaire. They weedle in out of them naturally, through conversation. It’s more nuanced. And there’s a suspenseful scene where Peter and the culprit engage in a conversation fraught with accusatory subtext, because you just know they’re talking about the culprit’s guilt, and not Peter’s “stressful work commitments.”

‘This particular responsibility you were speaking of still rests upon you?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘You have not yet completed the course of action on which you have decided?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You feel bound to carry it through?’

‘Oh, yes – I can’t back out of it now.’

‘No. You are expecting further strain?’

‘A certain ammount.’

‘Do you expect it to last much longer?’

‘Very little longer now.’

The tension!

There was some description here and there that was a bit dark (actually made my skin crawl) but also…something unintentionally funny. Learning about the criminal’s movements, I was reminded of the scene from Dispicable Me 2, when Gru goes on his bad date and she’s all unconscious and smacking into things. THAT scene. But with a naked guy. Poor Sayers! Before DM2, I’m sure people just found the whole thing ludicrous. Now it’s ludicrous and funny.

The plot takes you along two tracks – the mystery man, and finding the missing guy – and I got a bit confused in places trying to remember which character was relevant to which investigation. But I’ve since found out these two plot lines, along with Wimsey’s character, are influenced by E. C. Bentley’s book, Trent’s last case, which I put off reading until after I’d read Whose Body? because I thought she’d written hers first! I knew she was a fan, I didn’t know he was the main influence! Honestly, Sayers copies Bentley, and Mitchell copies Sayers. These golden age crime writers were so unoriginal.

Whose Body? Was more of a ‘disposal of the corpse’ plotline than I was expecting, but a good read, a solid story, and a well-deserved classic.

3.5/5

THE RUTHLESS LADY’S GUIDE TO WIZARDRY

Dellaria Wells – petty con artist, occasional theif and partly educated fire witch – is behind on her rent. To make ends meet, Delly talks her way into a guard job in the city of Leiscourt, joining a team of unconventional women to protect an aristocrat from unseen assassins.

It looks like easy money and a chance to romance her confident companion Winn – but when did anything in Delly’s life go to plan? With the help of a necromancer, a shape-shifting schoolgirl and a reanimated mouse named Buttons, Delly and Winn find themselves facing an adversary who weilds a twisted magic and has friends in the highest of places.

It’s my first book of the autumn season! And it’s giving sit-by-an-open-fire-with-a-hot-cup-of-tea cosy vibes. We have a witch, a rag-tag team of magical ladies, and a mouse called Buttons. It sounded like a fun, magical adventure novel, and that first sentence: “Dellaria Wells had misplaced her mother” – had me sold.

Unfortunately, that was all I read before buying the book, so it wasn’t until I started to read it that dread set in, because that writing style….yeesh. It’s set in some kind of victorian inspired fantasy land, and the dialogue and narration certainly give off a subtle dickensian feel (thinking Nancy from Oliver Twist, in Dellaria’s case) so I found the writing a little hard to get into at first. Thankfully I got used to it, and it didn’t hold up the book as much as I thought it might. (I’ll tell you what did hold up the book in a sec.)

Now initially, I was under the impression C.M Waggoner was from England, specifically up north, as she says ‘mam’ for mother, and at one point the word autumn is used, but nope, she’s actually American. I suppose a big clue to that fact is that (rather annoyingly) girls are called ‘gulls’ because I suppose to an American ear that’s what it sounds like from an English accent? But it was annoying and unncesessary, and Waggoner didn’t do that for any other word, so I’m left wondering why?

The main character, Dellaria Wells, aka Delly, is a hard on her luck lady of the lower classes with a neglectful mother, and a drinking problem. She’s self-reliant, has a bit of a reputation with the law, and is ever watchful for opportunities to better her situation for herself and her mother. Thus she finds herself acting as a guard for a woman who’s about to be married, for the chance of big fat pay cheque. This part of the plot, unfortunately, gets cut short pretty quickly. And now I’ll tell you what did hold up the book.