Tag: Overall

Bridget Collins – The Binding | Review

Title: The Binding

Author: Bridget Collins

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 440

Rating: 3.75/5

I’m naturally a little biased in favour towards this book because it was a gift from my girlfriend, who read it first and highly rated it and then passed it on to me when she was done. I can see why she gave it to me, because it’s a very “bookish” book with a magic system that essentially revolves around the physical act of creating and binding books.

It’s quite a hard book to categorise, but I guess I’d go with a sort of literary fantasy. It reminds me of a bunch of different things, perhaps most notably Frances Hardinge, but it also has its own refreshing feel while still observing a ton of common tropes. I feel like we see a lot of books like this on the market, but it’s rare for one of them to be this good.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot. I think that books have the equivalent of a mouth-feel, something that food reviewers often talk about and which essentially describes how pleasurable it is to chew a given piece of food. I think books have an equivalent, a sort of unexplainable sensation  that they generate somewhere inside you. Here, it has a hell of a good mouth-feel.

I also like the magic system here, which basically revolved around book binding. The binders have the ability to extract memories and to bind them into books, a bit like the literary equivalent of chugging a glass of mind bleach. The problem is that as so often happens, the magic is being abused.

In fact, there are trigger warnings here for sexual abuse, although I thought it was well done for whatever my opinion is worth. The problem is that there are a lot of rich old bastards who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing and using their money to cover it up, which is an all-too familiar story. The only difference is that here, they can go one step further than buying people’s silence. Here, their money can ensure that the victims of horrific wrongs end up forgetting all about it.

It’s pretty chilling really, and I think what this book does well is that it asks these uncomfortable questions and reflects our own world while still telling an overall story. It doesn’t tell you what to think, it just held up a mirror to our own world. One of the reviews on the dust jacket calls it an experience, and I think that’s about right. It’s some absorbing, impressive stuff, all right.

Learn more about The Binding.


Agatha Christie – The Listerdale Mystery | Review

Title: The Listerdale Mystery

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 4/5

This little collection of short stories was a lot of fun, but then I was always going to think that because I’m a big fan of Christie’s short fiction. It was also a pleasure to finally have a full collection to read, because the last few short story collections that I’ve picked up have been ones that included a ton of stories that I’d already read.

This might not be the best place to start if you’re new to Christie, but it does give you a pretty decent overall view of what her work is like, and you can read each of the stories as little standalones without any need to read previous novels or stories.

Overall then, if you spot this going cheap at a charity shop, definitely pick it up. Don’t go out of your way for it though, at least until you start to run out of other Christie books to read. As for me, I’m just a little sad because I’m starting to run out of her books.

Learn more about The Listerdale Mystery.