I impulse-bought The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale after tylersshelf posted a TikTok review saying, ‘This book is so silly, so campy. It gives you all those fairy-tale vibes but with adult themes.’ Given the heavier reading I’d been doing, I bought it and bumped it right up my TBR. It’s rare that humour works for me in a novel.
His review was spot on — I loved it for being fun, and now I’m keen to read another of his recommendations, The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer.
It’s a 6/5 ⭐️ read that has set the bar high for the rest of my 2026 reading.
It’s brilliant. Waggoner takes the leave-a-baby-that-is-probably-a-king-with-a-witch-to-raise trope and has fun with it. Drawing on humour and concepts that feel schooled by Pratchett’s approach to fairy tales and witches (with their practical approach to problem-solving combined with keen-eyed observations on human nature), Waggoner cranks up the narrative snark and uses it to tell the story of a mother (Gretsella) who will bring down a kingdom just to see her son (Bradley) happy.
The playfulness begins in the chapter subheadings and extends into the footnotes and descriptions, all of which are carried by the narrator’s voice, which reminds me of a sassy magical mirror.
The characters have substance, the cast is varied, and Waggoner sticks with fairy-tale‑like scenarios, adds twists so they feel fresh, and it works. The key reason for picking this up was the queer love story, which is sweet, doesn’t dominate, and lets it be just two people in love. It is utterly cosy.
The pacing, with the interludes and asides, feels like it’s always moving things forward or giving you fun snippets. It’s smart, charming, and cosy, and at 210 pages, it doesn’t outstay its welcome. The ending hints that further tales of Gretsella and Bradley may follow. I, for one, vote they do.
As you can tell, I was charmed — maybe enchanted — by it. Regardless, I now feel compelled to enjoy it all over again, as I’ve never giggled this much at a book, and I hope you do too.
Spoilers: Mild (premise, themes, and early plot developments) Genre: Science Fiction, LitRPG Format: Hardback Source: Bought Rating: Liked
On my copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC), under the dust jacket, it says, ‘You Will Not Break Me’. Whatever else you think of Carl, this sentiment holds true through book one and, based on what happens here, through the series as a whole.
DCC is one of the most popular titles in the relatively new genre label of LitRPG, and it deserves that status.
It focuses on Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, who just happen to be outside in the right place when the game commences and wipes out most of humanity.
As a reward for surviving this near-extinction-level event, all new players, Crawlers, must survive a series of puzzles, skirmishes, and occasional boss battles against “things” that are solely there to kill them. Their survival mostly depends on getting stronger and killing “things”, even if those things turn out to be their fellow humans.
I had to pause reading DCC around 1/3 of the way in, as I grew uncomfortable with Carl’s initial portrayal.
I am very much a ‘I care about the people more than the system’ person. Carl kills a confused, mutated woman and a crèche of goblin babies, showing little reaction to either his actions or his foes’ deaths.
I may have prematurely concluded that ‘I understand what DCC is trying to do, and I don’t think finishing it will change that—but maybe I’ll come to like it.’
After picking it back up and reading more, I did. I saw Carl as stoic and practical in his response — he later reflects that they are all there to die. Given Carl’s background as a Coast Guard veteran, I wondered if that’s just how they make them. His cat does act like an arsehole. But that’s a cat for you, especially one with trophies and rosettes, though even she acknowledges that Carl is trying to do the right thing in challenging circumstances.
Given his mantra of ‘You Will Not Break Me’, I started taking notes on when Carl was sympathetic or heroic in the face of everything he’s been pitted against. I feel the evidence shows he’s a ‘good guy’ in a bad world, and it makes you wonder what you would do. Just wait to die? Or try to survive and hope?
The ‘cleverness’ of this work, and perhaps of the genre, is that it takes the core mechanics of an RPG and reveals the brutal reality behind them. The system is against him—he’s there to kill and, ultimately, to die, in an entertaining way.
And that’s what video games do: they work in the abstract; they are pixels on a screen, and now there’s blood on the dungeon floor.
This isn’t a game. It’s real life, with all the complexities and the games within games that we all experience.
Carl gets to see that as he’s introduced to more than one of the Wizards behind the curtain. And in later scenes, Matt draws Carl into what the game represents: the politics, the promises and the control it exerts over everyone, because almost everyone is a victim.
As a video game-to-page adaptation, I can’t fault it. The explanations of weapons, bosses, and other baddies are good, and the AI overseer is funny, often inappropriately so. It feels like a video game experienced through all five senses.
You have to assume that everyone is going to die, including the crawlers and the NPCs (non-playable characters), even if they themselves might not know it. It’s a story told against that injustice, focusing on a character who’s trying his best, given his upbringing and background.
There is a lot to enjoy. The interactions, the characters, the system, the politics, and the backdrop against which it’s set.
Am I going to read the next one? Yes. And the one after that. I’m told that books 2 and 3 need to be read together to get the point Dinniman is trying to make.
I don’t think it’s a celebratory story; it’s brutal and shows the reality of RPGs while trying to satirise late-stage capitalism, which values money and entertainment over anything an individual might experience.
Do I expect it to soften its use of problematic gazes (see below)? Hopefully. I hear that it does as the series continues.
I guess we’ll see.
Addendum:
As a satire on capitalism, it’s complicated. Carl and probably the author, Matt, see the world through a white male gaze. I know more about the anatomy of his encounters with women than I wish. I’m not sure he ever mentions the guns, pecs, and thighs of any of the men he encounters.
As other commentary has pointed out, it’s great to call out what capitalism represents, but it might still rely too heavily on the language and framing of the worldview it’s trying to satirise, which makes it hard to distinguish between commentary and ingrained bias.
Spoilers: Mild (premise, themes, and early plot developments) Genre: Science Fiction Format: Paperback Source: Bought Rating: Loved
Would you fight for a love that feels right, even if it’s for someone you’ve never met? Not because you don’t want to, but because time has separated you by 6 months? Sounds crazy, right? But that’s what happens to Tressa Fay Robeson in Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon.
Tressa Fay is a successful and popular hairdresser known for giving her clients life-changing hairstyles. She is still recovering from a break-up when a random text message sends her across town on a date, only to be stood up at the bar. Well, not exactly stood up. Her date tells her where she is, but they aren’t there. And they didn’t stand each other up. They were both at the bar. It’s just that Tressa Fay is in the present and her date (Meryl) was waiting for her six months ago. Tressa Fay tells her friends that she’s texting a hot woman in the past, and they believe her.
From there, you and the characters enter a trust bubble. You have to trust that Meryl and Tressa Fay can communicate via text as the characters do, and believe that it’s really happening. We spend the opening section of the book focusing solely on Tressa Fay in the present. This shows us that, in the past, Tressa Fay hadn’t met Meryl and confirms she wasn’t supposed to. But Meryl doesn’t want to be trapped in a future where she disappears and doesn’t get to love Tressa Fay, even if it has consequences.
I think Annie Mare does an outstanding job not only of bouncing between timelines but also of guiding the reader through complex scientific concepts. Mare navigates them expertly because she’s hyper-focused on the emotional connections shared by all the characters.
This is Mare’s and the book’s strength. She was happy to hold my heart in her grip. I cared about all of their futures with all my heart. I teared up, held my breath, and crossed my fingers for the right things to happen.
But the science isn’t the driver of the story; the driver is two people who are passionately in love, desperate to meet and desperate not to lose each other, but it’ll only happen if they play the science right.
With seemingly nothing to lose but everything to gain, they start messing with time.
All their pasts and futures become tangled; their connections are so tenuous because the present could be changed, and they could be severed from each other at any moment.
They have the power to tell Meryl her future, and I kept wondering which upcoming past event they would choose to change and how it would manifest in the present. This tightened her fist around my heart like a vice for almost the entire time.
It’s a hard premise to land — how much of the mystery do you explain? Do you go where the readers expect, or where you expect? I think the concept for resolving the overlapping time was masterful; I was expecting one last dramatic revelation, and it didn’t come, and what happened as a result didn’t work for me.
Mare, I think, wanted a specific tone for the ending, but instead of leaning into the danger of their experimentation, she played it too safe. All the tension I had been holding slipped away, leaving me slightly deflated.
Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon, to me, is a meditation on the nature of love. The story itself feels like an instructor. I was its student. Because Meryl doesn’t want to be trapped in a future where she disappears and never gets to love Tressa Fay, every observation felt like something I needed to study and hold onto. There were so many observations I felt compelled to write down to study later. I loved watching them and taking notes as I explored, changed, loved and laughed — I just can’t promise you’ll like the last few pages.
Recommended for anyone who enjoys (or thinks they’ll enjoy) a mix of sapphic yearning and science fiction.
Note: I rate on a four-tier scale: Loved (4.5–5★), Liked (3.75–4.25★), Mixed (2.75–3.5★), and Not for me (1–2.5★).
Spoilers: Mild (themes and setup only Genre: Fantasy Format: e-ARC Source: NetGalley (in exchange for an unbiased review) Rating: Liked
This is Carey’s take on a short story by Hans Christian Andersen, unsurprisingly also called The Tinderbox. He tells the tale of a soldier and a witch whose existence has been put at risk by the deeds of their rulers.
If you’re wanting an action/adventure you’re not getting that. What you do get is a slower examination of good, bad, wicked and truly evil.
Set in a small Eastern European country of Allesheim, where there is a seemingly endless war with its neighbours, Ehrlich and Pozhka, though it’s unclear what they are truly fighting about.
It’s implied that whoever wins this fight for control will ultimately make no difference to the lives of the citizens of each country. And while the rulers squabble, their citizens are starving and dying for the sake of a war that has no end in sight.
The tone of the book is set by Mag Tresti, as he describes his honourable medical discharge being conducted alongside the execution of his condemned comrades, who have been branded as faithless cowards and are to be executed in batches. Both events are carried out on behalf of, and in the presence of, the king.
The soldier notes that, despite the pending deaths and general unhappiness of the gathering soldiers being honoured, a semblance of approval has been conjured up for the king’s speech where there was none. This hints at the power of the adviser, which is both magical and political.
Mag, the now ex-soldier, is shunned by those he comes across on his search for new employment, but eventually finds himself asking a reclusive widow, Jannae Mirchella, for work. Surprisingly but brusquely, she agrees, initially with terms acceptable to both.
But the terms offered—payment on completion of work—are not fulfilled, as she is always finding work to be done. This doesn’t seem to matter until Mag is doing a dangerous task and comes into possession of a Tinder Box.
This event soon coincides with him leaving the widow’s employ; formerly a man without power, he now seems to possess something powerful, though he doesn’t know at the time that it contains three devils.
The widow, however, is a witch. One who has been waiting for some unspecified right moment to go back into the world. This is not the moment she was waiting for, but recovering the box is overwhelming.
While travelling she starts to remember her past, and becomes haunted by a key moment, forced to look back at this and other decisions her circumstances forced her to take. She examines the most important one—taking her revenge—and why she’s been putting it off.
We start with Mag’s narration, but the story demands we see into the heart of Jannae, so it is then told from her perspective. And we get to understand what she’s willing to sacrifice, and are challenged to believe that there might be some good in her cold heart.
We switch between the two as one hunts the other down.
We even get to see the world through the king’s adviser, though we see nothing redeeming through his eyes.
The limits of choice are a theme that cuts across our three main characters, and we get to see the world from each of them, which may be a bit disappointing to those who were enjoying the ex-soldier’s narration and were happy to see the world from his point of view.
Told from multiple points of view, this allows Carey to provide better commentary and insight. The slower nature of the story gives space for this. He examines women in this society, who are not well thought of; the role of soldiers, seen as replicable; the ambivalence of those who hold power, though it is really the people who hold it; how people can be oh so very petty, where telling tales really doesn’t have consequences; and overall the value of a life, which becomes about living in the moment.
Ultimately, it is the story of how life doesn’t like people who want to live outside the boxes that society puts them into, making sure they toe the line, which is literal in the case of the three devils.
The skill of Carey’s storytelling is shown in scenes where Mag tries to befriend the inhabitants of the Tinder Box – like Aladdin’s genie, they can seemingly grant any wish, but they are prisoners bound to the commands of their possessor, and unlike the genie they have no end to their sentence. Does he win them over? Are they actually wicked or have they also found themselves on the wrong side of an ambivalent ruler?
There are reflections from both the living, the meta-living, and the dead.
On what happens to the living after death, one of the prisoners of the box says:
‘That knowledge Elohim has not shared with any. I have always assumed that there is a mill where old souls are washed and made new, but if there is I’ve never seen it. Perhaps they only fade. Or perhaps there is another place somewhere in which they enjoy a different existence. In any event, their persistence on this plane is short’
It doesn’t matter to the god of this world (Elohim); like the King, both treat the world as if there will always be more people, and more souls, to do their bidding, and that’s how they inevitably become worthless.
Carey makes you feel that everyone is worthy, well maybe not the evil King or his court. But everyone else—yes, there is a cost, but aren’t things of real value worth the price?
I am trying not to say too much, because it’s not packed with events; it’s more thoughtful and meditative. I think this will frustrate some readers, which would be a shame.
But if they stick with it, it’s a story of making the best of things, with some unrequited love—or perhaps lust—woven in.
Overall, it’s a fairytale stretched into a novel, spending that extra time exploring the meaning of life and what can be achieved if you truly live.
Note: I rate on a four-tier scale: Loved (4.5–5★), Liked (3.75–4.25★), Mixed (2.75–3.5★), and Not for me (1–2.5★).
Spoilers: None Genre: Literary Fiction Format read: Print Disclosure: None [this book was purchased by me] Loved (4.5–5★)
This is Haddad’s second novel. His first, Guapa, won the Polari First Book Prize and was set over 24 hours during the Arab Spring. Floodlines starts in July 2014 and ends in November 2014, but it documents events that happened decades earlier, and they ripple through its pages.
Haddad shows us that dreams play a significant role in the trajectory of our lives. He presents us with characters who are happier when the past is forgotten and buried in the sand, and contrasts them with those whose childhood nostalgia is so powerful it demands their shared past be uncovered. A past cleaned up and carried aloft with pride, like a tarnished family heirloom of uncertain value.
As the story progresses, some of the characters’ imagined pasts are shown to be untethered from reality. These conflicting memories explosively converge by the end of the novel. They often take the form of a waking dream, in which past events in Iraq intrude on the reality of their English country-cottage family home. Hopes for the future—a future where those displaced by the wars in Iraq are able to go home and re-find their identities—are harshly exposed as fantasy. But the reality is that a swept-away past has been left to fester.
On its surface, this is a story of three sisters who are arguing over how to honour or preserve their father’s artistic legacy. Their father was a hero in Iraq, still revered as a great artist, and is remembered for the impact he had. But the plan to track down his art and exhibit it unravels the past that has been tightly bound and hidden away.
There is an early email exchange in which Zainab states to Mediha, “I am copying in Ishtar because all three of us, as Hayder’s daughters, should be involved in these discussions.” However, this exchange later boils over with the reply, “Your concern for Baba’s legacy is laughable. What is driving all this sudden love and adoration?”
Haddad weaves a tapestry using the points of view of a son (Nizar, a war journalist turned sex worker), his mother (Zainab), her two sisters (Ishtar, the middle sister, and Mediha, the youngest and carer to their mother), and their mother (Bridget). Each point of view is a loose thread that the characters and the story tug on, as the lies their lives were built on unravel.
Art does not heal the trauma, and exposing the realities through factual reporting doesn’t either. The act of creation and observation does, however, expose the inner self. For example, Zainab collects objects and creates handicrafts and is seen as a lesser artist, while Ishtar has turned her art into political protest but is now beating a drum that only she can hear.
Lies sit at the heart of the novel because they are used to sweep away the truth. It is a story of dreams and quests, but also of the realities of displacement, and of how setting the past aside in favour of the present does not remove its burdens.
Though the story opens with Nizar, it is ultimately a family story. Haddad centres each of them, and some of the most powerful moments come when Bridget’s past and present merge. In these skilfully described scenes, you wonder if you are in a country home in the UK or standing in a house in Iraq. By the end, you know their mother has moulded them, but their history, and the desert heat, have fired them.
Floodlines asks: What does their father’s art reveal? And is that knowledge worth it?
The answer challenges taboos and conformity, exposing the lies we tell others and ourselves to feel safe. Ultimately, it serves as a warning that art is the heart revealed.
Gav Reads 