Non-savage review: Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Phillip Reeve

With thanks to NetGalley who gave me a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.I was delighted to get a review copy of this book. I’ve read and enjoyed some of Reeve’s other work so I was ready to get stuck in. This is a book for older children – …

Another not-very-savage review: From the Jewish Provinces by Fradl Shtok

With thanks to NetGalley who gave me a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. These stories, originally published in Yiddish, are snapshots of a particular life: Eastern European Jews in the early years of the 20th century. Most take place in a shtetel in Skala, in what’s now Ukraine. …

A non-savage review of On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith and the Gifts of Neurodiversity by Daniel Bowman Jr

We don't always have to be savage. Seriously. Seriously. With thanks to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book is a series of short #ownvoices pieces about autism, faith and life. Like Bowman, I am autistic. We are both creative types. We were both …

Cantatrice has free OPINIONS: Applied Behavioural Analysis

As I mentioned, I'm not really up to bigass blog posts right now, but I thought I might put out a few shorter ones in which I explain THE RIGHT POSITION on an issue or topic. These arguments are on the house. Feel free to steal them and use them when you encounter someone who …

Savage Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Clune

Where have I been? I have been in the Land of Not Braining Good. Which is unfortunately not where the words live. So there have not been so many of them. I hope to return properly soon, but in the meantime I haven't done a savage review for a while, so here's one for The …

Misunderstood writing advice part 1: “You don’t have to like a character”

I’ve been doing some more critiquing of other people’s writing recently and it’s been an eye-opening experience. The quality of writing I’ve looked at has varied from publishable literary fiction quality down to buttock-clenchingly piss poor trash. I’m not going to name or quote anyone because that would be shitty behaviour and also against the …

Notes on Faith, Grief and Homophobia

This is going to be a long one. And when I say that at the start - instead of aiming for brevity and spawning a great verbose behemoth instead - you know it’s true. There’s also extremely personal and painful stuff in here, so there will be less snark than usual. Probably not no snark, …

Assholes, eyes, dogs and weddings

Housekeeping first. I’m aware I tend towards lengthy silly end notes which you probably can’t be arsed to scroll down and up for. So I’m going to try putting them after the paragraph rather than at the end and we’ll see if that makes a big mess of things or if it’s better. OK disability …

My mother-in-law, her sewing machine, and my sewing machine (that she bought me).

CW for griefhammers Soon after I started this blog, I wrote about my father-in-law, and about the pen he left to me when he died. I thought I’d write something similar about my mother-in-law, who died a week ago. So this is a bit fresh. It’s also a memoriam in the context of an object. …

Diamine Inkvent: The View From the Opera House

By which I mean MY house, because any house I’m in is the Opera House. And you know, lockdown, so that we don’t all die. So far so good on that front, but if I develop a fever mid review I’ll let you know. I’m not going to talk about that in any great depth …