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My Book Has Published! The Gilded Crown, Book 1 of the Raven's Trade Series

    The Gilded Crown, HarperVoyager       My debut novel, The Gilded Crown , is now published! Having a book finished and out there is something of a dream come true, and it's a real honour to be publishing with HarperVoyager.    I've been writing since I was a child and I've always known it was what I wanted to do. I think it emerged from a complete paralysis about what I should morph my life into; pirate, firefighter, astronaut, soldier, I was spoiled for choice at a young age and very privileged to be in a position to become whatever I wanted to be (well, except perhaps pirate, but there's still time). As a writer, you can be anything and everything, you can study a thousand different areas of research (for the GC I read up on medieval medicine, herbology, and raven care, just to name a few), and become a thousand people. It is freedom, pure and simple, to cloak yourself in the fur of whatever beast you'd like to become. I have soared and galloped a...
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Film review: the Menu

The Menu (2022) Warning, spoilers! I recently watched the Menu, directed by Mark Mylod. I have never written a review for a film before, so bear with me if I haven’t used quite the right format for this sort of thing.  We've all read stories about fine dining experiences that go a bit too far. Three course meals, each consisting of one mouthful of food, leaving guests starving and short a hundred quid. The Michelin-starred restaurant that serves citrus foam which guests have to lick from a plaster mould of the chef's mouth. The Menu takes this feeling of ridiculousness and elevates it, mocking not just the chefs who would offer such food, but also guests who take it seriously.  I went into the film knowing there was a twist and fully expecting that the twist would be that they were all cannibals eating either previous guests or the staff. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say I was half right; the phrase 'eat the rich' feels appropriate.  The...
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March 2025 book review

Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang     Yellowface is about a young writer, Juniper, who witnesses the death of her rival and friend, Athena, and in the flurry of trauma picks up the manuscript from Athena's desk and decides to pass it off as her own. Beyond the opportunistic theft, the problem is that the book is about Chinese labourers in World War I, a topic June knows nothing about and which she has no cultural claim to tell. As she spins more and more lies to keep herself safe, she finds herself caught up in social media battles about race, industry greed, plagiarism, and white privilege. I found this book incredibly stressful. It's satire not in the sense of being humourful, because this book is not funny, but because it holds up the publishing industry to ridicule. The funniest thing about the whole book is that the publishing industry irl lauds it as a scathing commentary, and has made it fit their own narrative of being charmingly self-aware and -effacing. An irony I'm sur...
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