get invested in. I want to follow a character (or characters). I want them to be interesting, I want them to develop and evolve. And, generally speaking, I’d like them to win. So, yeah, this book not for me.
Posts by Dan Sutcliffe
#BooksRead2026
36: When The Moon Hits Your Eye, by John Scalzi.
Not really a fan of this type of book. All disparate stories, tied together by the Moon turning to cheese. There were some good parts, and we did follow some characters through a few of the anecdotes, but largely speaking not enough to
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35: The Ending Writes Itself, by Evelyn Clarke.
Disappointed with this. The characters are fine, the premise and set-up is interesting, but it takes too long to get going and then everyone dies in a rush. And the ending(s) all felt a bit meh, especially as to why the killer did it.
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34: Murder at World’s End, by Ross Montgomery.
Interesting little murder-mystery. Made better by Decima’s endless swearing.
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33: The Pilgrims Of The Damned, hy Steve McHugh.
Nice readable adventure for Miles and Church. It does feel a little bit easy for Miles, with even a Dusk not proving a challenge for him, but an enjoyable read even so.
That may be coding language dependent, and may also be down to how you use it.
I’ve not found it great. The code generated may be efficient or it may waste valuable processing power and take hours to run.
Smaller or generic queries are probably fine, but when you’re data engineering complex queries covering millions of rows/thousands of columns it can get things badly wrong.
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32: First Hunt, by Steve McHugh.
Nice quick novella about Church’s first hunt. Slightly disappointed this wasn’t told from Church’s POV though.
I should do a giveaway here too!
I'll randomly select someone who retweets this to receive a signed copy of Daughter of Crows 🙂
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31: Exhausted, by Anna Katharina Shaffner.
Thought this would be some good insight into exhaustion/burnout, but was a rather bland shopping list of items that related to it. Lacked personality and analysis felt shallow rather than insightful.
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30: Strange Houses, by Uketsu.
A decent start, but then it meandered towards the absurd with the “explanation” and subsequent possible twist. An easy quick read for all that. So worth a try to see if you enjoy it.
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29: Men At Arms, by Terry Pratchett.
This was the first Discworld novel I ever owned. Hardly surprising it remains one of my favourites.
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28: Fevered Star, by Rebecca Roanhorse.
A Story wherein little of much import happens, and that which does makes little sense.
These are Broken Binding editions, so I tried to give these books a fair shout, but I think it’s time. This story isn’t for me.
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27: Lords And Ladies, by Terry Pratchett.
It’s Discworld, so there are some great bits in it, but overall I’ve never quite taken to this one. Not sure why.
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26: Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett.
One of my favourite Discworld novels, which says a lot, given how many great ones there are. The re-read continues. Only two years since the last one (whoops. Got distracted).
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25: Green And Deadly Things, by Jenn Lyons.
Enjoyable quick read, although the lack of explanation about what is going on does make it difficult to follow. Still don’t really understand the vines thing. Or the maze. Or the chaos/order. Or…
useless and easily usurped. Was it enough to lead me on to the second book? Not sure.
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24: Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse.
Bit disappointing. It all feels a bit underdone. Serapio’s past needed more detail. Xiala’s past too. The ship journey felt needlessly rushed. The politics of the Sun Priest and crew needed a lot more info and explanation as to why Naranpah was so
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23: Strange Pictures, by Uketsu. (translated by Jim Rion).
A little bit odd, but an interesting story, with the way it all comes together at the end for the big reveal feeling quite satisfying.
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22: Operation Bounce House, by Matt Dinniman.
Didn’t take much away from this one. It’s all a bit lacklustre. The humour, the storyline, the twisty ending…
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21: Nettle and Bone, by T. Kingfisher.
Some good bits, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as last one.
One Week by Barenaked Ladies. I’ve no idea what most of the words are but I know they have a samurai…
I’m pretty sure if you keep writing with it, the ink will start to refill.
I mean, it now works by feeding off of your soul to generate the ink. But that’s a small price to pay, right?
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20: Little Red Death, by Alexandra Benedict.
It’s a twisty murder mystery with a very odd fantasy element to it. Interesting to read, but not sure it is that successful.
wih Tanaquis felt so utterly unnecessary, except to drag this story on for a bit longer.
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19: Labyrinth’s Heart, by M A Carrick.
Glad this is done. I didn’t enjoy it much. Went on for 100 pages too long, with a load of “just one more thing”. So much of it remained unexplained. I get show, don’t tell. But this wasn’t so much show as endless bafflement. And the weird twist
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17&18: Deep Black and Whalesong by Miles Cameron
Decent sci-fi read, though struggled with the technical detail and the whys of certain events.
I’m so sorry Anna 😥
I can’t really understand what it must feel like. But if there anything I can do to distract you from it, please let me know.
We still have Kevin Bacon?
I think.
Is your plan “fund the NHS”? because that’s a good start.