Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "The Cry of the Icemark" series by Stuart Hill

It is now twenty years ago that Leicester born-and-bred author Stuart Hill won the first ever Waterstones Children's Book Award with his epic novel Cry of the Ice Mark, the first of a series that has captivated readers since 2005 and has been reissued this year.

Stuart Hill’s Cry of the Icemark series, beginning with The Cry of the Icemark (2005), followed by Blade of Fire (2006) and Last Battle of the Icemark (2008), stands as one of the more distinctive contributions to early 2000s young adult fantasy. It blends high-stakes warfare, mythic alliances, and coming-of-age drama with an exuberant, almost folkloric energy. Across the trilogy, Hill crafts a world that feels both familiar in its medieval fantasy scaffolding and refreshingly idiosyncratic in its cultural detail, humour, and emotional sincerity.

The first novel introduces readers to Thirrin Freer Strong in the Arm Lindenshield, a teenage warrior princess thrust into leadership after the death of her father in battle. This is the novel’s core dramatic engine: Thirrin’s struggle to transform her small northern kingdom into a coalition strong enough to resist the technologically advanced Polypontian Empire. The premise is archetypal, but Hill’s execution is unusually lively. He populates the world with werewolves, vampires, giant snow leopards, warlocks, and forest elementals, creatures who are not merely decorative but woven into the political and emotional fabric of the story.

One of the series’ greatest strengths is its sense of cultural texture. The Icemark itself evokes a Scandinavian-influenced warrior society, while the Hypollitan people, Thirrin’s maternal lineage, draw inspiration from Amazonian myth. These influences are not subtle, but Hill uses them with affection rather than derivation, creating a patchwork world that feels mythic rather than derivative. The alliances Thirrin forges are not simple plot devices; they are opportunities for Hill to explore how societies with radically different values negotiate trust, honour, and survival.

The first book’s pacing is brisk, sometimes breathless. Hill’s background as a bookseller and archaeologist seems to inform his interest in mythic structures and heroic archetypes, but he writes with a modern sensibility. He occasionally uses contemporary language, calling Thirrin's father "Dad," for instance, which adds a slightly anachronistic charm to the otherwise medieval setting. Some readers may find this jarring; others can see it as part of the series’ playful tone. What is undeniable is Hill’s commitment to making Thirrin accessible. She is fierce, stubborn, and occasionally reckless, but her emotional arc, grief, responsibility, self doubt, and determination ground the fantasy in something recognisably human.

The battle scenes are a highlight. Hill’s prose is clear, energetic, and cinematic, military fantasy elements surprisingly robust for a younger audience: strategy, logistics, morale, and political negotiation all play meaningful roles. The Polypontian Empire, led by the formidable General Scipio Bellorum, is not a faceless evil but a disciplined, rational, expansionist force. This gives the conflict a sense of weight and complexity, elevating it above the typical good-versus-evil binary.

The second book, Blade of Fire, expands the world significantly. While the first novel is tightly focused on Thirrin’s coming of age and the defence of the Icemark, the sequel broadens the narrative to include her children and the long-term consequences of the alliances forged in the first book. The stakes grow more global, and Hill leans further into the series’ blend of mythic fantasy and military epic. The emotional tone deepens as well: themes of legacy, sacrifice, and generational responsibility come to the fore. 

The final book, Last Battle of the Icemark, brings the trilogy to a dramatic conclusion. Hill’s interest in large-scale conflict reaches its peak here, and the narrative becomes darker and more complex. The alliances that once seemed unshakeable are tested, and the characters, now older, more seasoned, and more burdened, face moral dilemmas that go beyond battlefield heroics. The trilogy’s ending is bold, emotional, and thematically coherent, reinforcing Hill’s commitment to portraying war not as a romantic adventure but as a crucible for identity, loyalty, and loss.

Across the series, Hill’s character work is earnest and often charming. Thirrin remains one of fantasy’s more memorable heroines: fierce without being one note, proud without being arrogant, and vulnerable without losing her edge. Her relationship with Oskan, the young warlock who becomes her closest friend and advisor, is particularly well drawn. Their dynamic, half banter, half philosophical tension, adds warmth and humour to the otherwise martial narrative. The supporting cast, from the dignified Snow Leopards to the decadent Vampires, is colourful and distinctive. Hill’s vampires, in particular, are a delightful departure from the brooding romantic archetype: they are aristocratic, sardonic, and bored, joining the war largely for entertainment.

Thematically, the series explores unity through diversity. Thirrin’s alliances are not merely strategic; they are symbolic of a world in which survival depends on cooperation across cultural, species, and ideological boundaries. This message feels especially resonant given the series’ publication era, and it remains relevant today. Hill also engages with themes of grief and remembrance. The first book is dedicated to his sister Kathleen, "the real Thirrin," whom he lost to leukaemia as a teenager. This personal connection infuses the narrative with emotional sincerity, particularly in moments where Thirrin confronts loss or fear.

Hill writes with exuberance, sincerity, and a clear love for mythic storytelling. The result is a trilogy that feels less like a polished corporate fantasy product and more like a heartfelt, imaginative saga told by someone who genuinely delights in the act of creation.

In the broader landscape of fantasy, The Cry of the Icemark series occupies a unique niche. It is less romantic than many contemporaries, more militaristic, and more rooted in mythic archetypes. It appeals to readers who enjoy epic battles, political alliances, and richly imagined cultures. It also offers something increasingly rare: a heroine whose strength is defined not by destiny or magical power but by courage, leadership, and the willingness to learn.

Ultimately, Stuart Hill’s trilogy is a vibrant, emotionally resonant, and culturally textured work of fantasy. It remains beloved by readers who appreciate its blend of myth, warfare, humour, and heart. For those seeking a fantasy series that balances epic scale with genuine warmth, and that celebrates the power of unlikely alliances, it is well worth reading.

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 69. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

Review by Rebecca Nolten of "Yesteryear" by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear is unlike anything I have ever read. Rarely has a protagonist been so immediately, spectacularly unlikeable. Natalie hooks you through her sheer vanity and inflated ego, then drags you by the hair through the calamity of her life.

For you, dear reader, in picking up Yesteryear, have become one of the "angry women." As you devour this tantalising read, you become engrossed in a cocktail of disbelief, outrage, and Schadenfreude.

Natalie Heller Mills is a "tradwife" influencer who preaches about the glory days of knit-your-own-yoghurt traditionalism to her online fanbase, made up of seething "bad" modern women and envious "good" Christian wives. She does so while surrounded by her gaggle of home-schooled children and her good ol’ cowboy husband, Caleb. They live on Yesteryear Ranch — a haven of home-baked bread, organic American farming, Christian domesticity, and … a mega media machine.

Behind the scenes, there are nannies, producers, and immigrant field workers keeping this titanic ship afloat, all hidden from public view. Yesteryear Ranch’s success is accredited exclusively to Natalie, Caleb, and their supposedly secure, godly marriage – secretly marred by disappointing sex, deep-seated loathing, and an affair that threatens to destroy everything.

The Nara-Smith-of-it-all comes to a screeching halt when Natalie is inexplicably transported to the Pioneer days she so idolised.

It is 1855.

"This is my home. This is not my home" — Natalie finds herself on a ramshackle farm set against the same Idaho hills as Yesteryear Ranch. In this world, Natalie has four children: Maeve, Mary, Abel, and Noah. They are so reminiscent of her own, and yet they are not hers. "Old Caleb" completes the uncanny scene — a burly version of Natalie’s husband who works the land, breeds her "like a barnyard animal," and hits her when she disobeys him.

The novel flips back and forth between these two realities: the modern illusion of traditionalism — filtered through hate comments, internet fame, and carefully curated images — and the harsh, bare-bones existence of true traditionalism, with all its scrubbing, kneading, and inescapable boredom.

But Natalie fails to reach anagnorisis. In fact, as the novel progresses, she becomes enveloped — oddly charmed, even — by her new life. While she initially questions whether this is the work of time travel or some hellishly elaborate reality TV stunt, she eventually comes to believe that it is by Divine design that she is destined to live in this "authentic" world.

But what of the fame? The hunger for attention? The desperate need for an audience? That is the one thing that leaves Natalie wanting: to be perceived. Because if there is one thing her audience of "angry women" loves to do, it’s watch her.

Yesteryear’s sharp, bitter first-person prose tears apart the fallacies of the American dream, traditional gender roles, political messaging, the Church, and our online personas. It encompasses all of this without ever losing the reader’s attention, and as much as you may want to, you cannot tear your eyes away from the car crash that is Natalie Heller Mills.

A blisteringly funny and unnervingly perceptive debut, Yesteryear cements Caro Claire Burke as a voice to watch. I, for one, cannot wait to see what she writes next.

About the reviewer
Rebecca Nolten is a Modern and Medieval Languages graduate from the University of Cambridge (Girton College). She has worked across editorial, copywriting, translation, and arts publishing, with a particular focus on storytelling and visual culture. She is especially interested in translation, art history, and the ways in which stories move across languages, cultures, and media. Outside work, she enjoys illustration, reading, and visiting galleries and exhibitions.

Review by Sally Shaw of "Perfect Circle," ed. Rob Redman, illustrated by Lucy Scott

Perfect Circle, an illustrated anthology, is volume two in the Uncertain Stories series. The stories tell how life, happenings, folklore, beliefs and society move in cycles that may or may not form complete circles.

"Swineside" by David Frankel opens with "I have two mementos of my visit to Swineside: a photograph and a tape recording." Immediately I want to know what or who was in the photograph and on the recording. The photograph shows Mathew, Anne and Clara at Swineside. The protagonist is looking back on a significant time in his life. Frankel enabled me to visualise and feel the bleakness of Swineside. Mathew is wrestling with his younger-self: was he right to question the mental stability of his girlfriend Anne, due to the circumstances of her grandmother’s death? Should he have believed what was recorded on the tape or accepted what Clara said she heard? This is a story of the power of hindsight and maturity although it may not always have the answers.

"Triptych" by Eva Carson tells the story of an artist whose life’s work depicts the mountainous landscape of Scotland so much so it appears that she is possessed as her paintings always follow the same format, as if she’s trapped in a reoccurring nightmare. There’s a darkness to the paintings: something is lurking within the crevices of the rocks, "I will say that viewers almost always have the same reaction: fear, even a kind of disgust." Following the death of her mother, her daughter visits her mother’s biographer, Robert. When Robert dies six weeks later his documentation of interviews with her mother describe the place where she first encountered the mountainous landscape and a mysterious event from which she never truly escaped. Carson writes in a way that enables the reader to experience the chill of the uncanny happenings, and provides unexpected outcomes and twists. The closing line is fabulous. 

"Dead Man’s Hollow" by Kathy Hoyle is the longest of the stories and its placing within the book is perfect. "They built a skate park over Dead Man’s Hollow. We were dead chuffed. Nobody needed a reminder of the past, the councilmen said, not in this day and age." Whatever happened must have been long ago if adults were talking about it; it was as though by putting a skate park on top of the hollow it would keep the children safe. I sensed the threat of history repeating itself, and as the story is told the tension builds in this ordinary working-class community with an unspoken knowing. Hoyle has three main voices, The Boy, The Witch and The Worm. I like the way Hoyle titled each, they formed vignettes which provide clarity and heightened my anxiety with each ending, like scenes from a play. Hoyle’s microstructure provides a rhythmic flow, and at the climax I felt the panic of The Boy’s parents and aunt running towards him, while being chased. The terror was palpable. What I thought was going to happen didn’t, and an unexpected hero is burdened with a gift. I appreciated the use of local dialect, its authenticity and how it amplified the voice of The Worm. 

"The Watchkeeper" by Lauren O’Donoghue I read twice. Writing from the protagonist's viewpoint, O’Donoghue causes the reader to believe all is normal, at first glance, and then the reader sees the reality of what's happened. 

The narrator of "Date Night" by Lynsey May is a woman who opposes the eternal generational cycle of society’s opinion of what’s right for a woman. The woman is complex, her thoughts and actions projecting a feeling of the supernatural and danger. 

The book ends with "Perfect Circle" by Jo Gatford. I absolutely loved this story of knowing deep down the fragility of life and the cruelty of that one in a million chance. This is a wonderful and atmospheric human story. 

Perfect Circle was a joy to read, bringing to my mind that maybe sometimes acceptance of uncertainty will bring a sense of peace.

About the reviewer
Sally has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson. She has short stories and poetry published in various online publications including the Ink Pantry, AnotherNorth, Roi Faineant Press. Sally lives in the countryside. 

Review by Hannah Kimmins of "Ordinary Saints" by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

"The first time I kissed a girl, my brother died": Years after her older brother Ferdia’s tragic death, Jay has moved from her hometown in Ireland and is living in London with her girlfriend, trying to live her most authentic life without religious constriction. However, when her parents inform her that there’s a campaign to canonise Ferdia, she can no longer run away from her grief. What follows is a battle between her brother’s death and her own life. 

Ordinary Saints is anything but ordinary. It is a complex, messy yet measured conversation about the role of religion in society and how it can both bring families together and tear them apart. Jay could also be described by these three words: complex, messy, yet measured. The author never lets you get too close to her, which from my perspective is purposeful - you never fully sympathise with her, or her parents, or even Ferdia. You see all of their beauty and their flaws, and the debate becomes more about the role of religion from a micro and macro lens rather than the morals of the individuals, which helps the reader form their own opinion. The humans are at the heart of the story; not God. 

This is a truly special story, and a truly accomplished debut novel from Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin. Despite the main story being about sainthood, reading it felt overwhelmingly real - like it could happen to you, or a friend, or someone in your community. It also contemplated the relationship between queerness and Catholicism, succeeding in not pitching them against each other, but instead finding where they intersect. Once again, the reader is encouraged to form their own opinions on the characters and concepts within the novel. Do not be mistaken; this novel is not neutral. It has a voice. However, the reader is encouraged to have their own voice too. 

If you’re looking for an original story that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page, Ordinary Saints is a modern gem that should not be missed. 

About the reviewer
Hannah Kimmins is a scouse writer and was a Waterstones bookseller for 7 years. She has been reviewing books since she was 15 years old, and continues to live and breathe books. She has a Masters degree in English and is graduating with a Masters in Psychology this year. More than anything else, she loves to learn. 

Review by David Keyworth of "Beyond the Page: Mary Shelley 175 Years On," with Andrew McInnes, Bradford Literature Festival, 6 July 2026

"There’s more to Mary Shelley than Frankenstein": this was how Dr Andrew McInnes concluded his talk at Bradford’s Festival Hub. He divided his slides into four main themes: Goth Queen; Mother of Science Fiction; Queer Ally; Contemporary.

He cited a range of evidence to suggest how Mary (1797-1851) was a Goth before Goths were invented. One rumour is that she and her poetic-genius partner, Percy Bysshe Shelley, made love on the grave of Mary’s equally famous mother, feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft. McInnes argued that, though this may be true, the term "make love" in the eighteenth century did not necessarily mean to f***.

The Mother of Science Fiction section mainly drew on the novel The Last Man (1826). Mary imagined a fast-travelling world, where London to Edinburgh would take two hours in a hot air balloon. It is a small mercy that she never lived to see the reality of modern train travel.

McInnes backed up his description of his subject as a queer ally mainly with reference to her helping Isabella Robinson and the transgressive Walter Sholto Douglas, in 1827, acquire fake passports and live lives of superficial conformity, in Europe.

Mary’s attitude to the east and the Muslim world was, McInnes acknowledged, one that didn’t necessarily paint her in such a liberal light. He referred to the way that the non-Christian world was often the original source of strife in her fiction, for example the plague in The Last Man. Even the most forward-thinking individuals still absorb the attitudes of their era.

Audience questions covered topics including Mary’s world view, how the Shelleys financed their lifestyle, Lord Byron and Orientalism, and finally, a view of American sitcom, The Munsters, as an alternative 1960s existence for Frankenstein’s Monster.

McInnes is Reader in English Literature at Edge Hill University. He certainly did justice to his subject and her difficult but "creatively engaging life."

 

About the reviewer
David Keyworth was born in West Bromwich but grew up in North Lincolnshire. He was awarded a New Poets Bursary by the Northern Writers’ Awards, 2013. His debut pamphlet, The Twilight Shift, is published by Wild Pressed. He has completed a poem-sequence called Death and Taxis, which he’d like to include in another pamphlet. He also writes for the Weekend Notes.  

Interview with Suyin Du Bois

Suyin Du Bois is a poet of mixed Chinese-Malaysian and Belgian heritage, living in London with her South African husband. Her poems have been published in Propel, Iamb, Stanzas, Bi+ Lines: An Anthology of Contemporary Bi+ Poets (Fourteen Publishing, 2023) and Malaysian Places and Spaces (Maya Press, 2024), amongst others. She is a member of the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective 2024/25. When not obsessing over word choice, Suyin spends her time building a profit-with-purpose start-up that seeks to ensure 24/7 access to nutritious, affordable food for NHS hospital staff. Eating Air is her debut pamphlet.

Interviewed by Laura Sygrove

LS: Eating Air opens with "Ode to Kaya," a poem that moves between childhood and adulthood. Why did this feel like the right poem to begin the collection?

SDB: "Ode to Kaya" was the first poem I wrote where food took such a central role, and it really opened up something in me. Suddenly I was thinking of all the different ways food could help me explore different areas of emotional interest. Since this poem acted as a gateway for me, I hoped it might do the same for my reader. Beyond that, it seeded some key context and themes for the collection which I hoped would help get the reader quickly into this world: the idea of multiple homes at distance from one another, the connective power of food, as well as tensions around identity.

LS: In poems such as this one, there is a sense that food and memory change when carried across borders. How has living in London affected your relationship to the places and traditions you write about?

SDB: Certainly, I think distance romanticises the worlds that you are apart from, and that we are more at risk of taking for granted that to which we have daily access. In my writing I am often trying to capture elements of the world that are not my day-to-day, to make my memories and momentary impressions tangible. Regarding living in London specifically, I love how culturally mixed London feels to me, how it feels like a place where I can be all the parts of myself. I do think it is a very positive influence on my writing in this sense. 

LS: Your preface connects food, poetry, and a sense of home, while many poems explore questions of identity and belonging. How has writing poetry helped you navigate the cultures, languages, and places that have shaped you? 

SDB: What a beautiful question. I love the reflective nature of writing poetry. It encourages me to ask questions of myself, to think about what I’m interested in communicating and why. There are parts of my cultural upbringing that are already bedded in, others I have consciously sought out for myself, and others I am only learning about now. I am still being shaped. It’s all a work in progress, and I think poetry has a supportive, parallel role to play in that. Beyond this, I love how poetry connects me to other people. I have some readers who have similar upbringings and background to me and others who have completely different ones. Hearing both these sets of readers highlight something I wrote that resonates with them is beautiful and fills me with a new sense of belonging. I honestly can’t get enough of it. 

LS: Much of the collection is written in prose poetry. What drew you to this form, and how do you decide when a poem needs a different structure?

SDB: Pretty much every poem for me starts as a brief note about a specific idea or memory. My Notes app is full of these! When I have time to sit down and write, I take one of these ideas and free-write to try to get down as much core and tangential detail as I can. From this free-write, I pick out the elements that I think make a poem, and then start writing toward that in a much more structured fashion. Usually this is where I start to introduce form. I'm firstly interested in making line breaks and stanzas work with my own cadence and pacing: I will always read my poems out loud throughout the editing process (a big reason why I struggle to edit in public!). Beyond that, I look at the overall shape and feel of the poem, and try to use the form to introduce some element of surprise or highlight particular words or ideas. 

For the slash poems in the collection, I still see these as line-broken poems rather than prose poems. In "Cut Scenes" this felt right at first due to the fragmentary nature of retelling memories that aren't mine, where I am inserting myself. Additionally, there was something about the poem being sliced up like steak that I rather liked! In "Every trip to Brussels must include a Sunday," again these felt like fragments of varying interconnectivity all stuck together in one big way, so the close separateness of the slash felt right to me here as well.

LS: In poems such as "Auntie Pixi’s Aga Agak," recipes become a way of preserving memory. What interested you about those moments where cultural inheritance feels both intimate and incomplete? 

SDB: While I very much embrace my two heritages, I feel a certain level of disconnectedness also for two key reasons (and perhaps others too). Firstly, I never knew any of my grandparents, they all passed away before I was born. Secondly, I can't speak any of my heritage languages fluently. As I've gotten older these things have bothered me more and I've mourned that feeling of distance, even in the context of love, with older family members who have now passed. This is a continuing area of interest for me.

LS: "Chinese New Year at Sara’s" explores the tension between inheriting traditions and reshaping them. Why was that an important theme for you to write about? 

SDB: I suspect that I or the things that I do will never be whole or authentic enough for some people, and so I'm conscious that I need to claim and celebrate these differences for myself. Knowing this and doing it, however, are not the same thing! Having said that, I actually didn’t realise that’s where this poem was going to go when I started to write it. It took me to quite a bold, declarative place all by itself. 

LS: The title Eating Air comes from Hokkien and Malay expressions connected to food, wellbeing, and travel. When did you realise it was the right title for the collection, and what does the phrase mean to you now?

SDB: I had these phrases "chiak hong" and "makan angin" noted down as a seed idea for a poem for a long time, and planned to explore how these idioms for travelling translate to "eating air," but I just never ended up writing into the idea. When I was getting my sample of ten poems together in response to The Emma Press open call for submissions, I needed to give the collection a working title in the proposal. I was struggling to find something within the sequence of poems itself and this jumped out at me when I turned to my Notes app for inspiration. It just seemed to fit perfectly with how the poems invite the reader to travel across the world with them. I also love how the title is intriguing in English as an unusual turn of phrase. I’ve had several people ask me the story behind it. Luckily, I was able to include an explanation in the preface, which unravels this for non-Malaysians.

LS: Food carries memory, grief, family history, identity, and belonging throughout the pamphlet. What does food allow you to explore in poetry that other subjects might not?

SDB: Food gives me a really concrete, sensory way into so many different subjects. I can start off free-writing about the physical experience of eating and end up somewhere completely different, abstract or even undefined, which I might otherwise struggle to get to or to articulate without the more tangible language of food. 

It felt really generative for me as well, having this theme of food to play with. I was constantly thinking of new meaningful food moments, and noting them all down. I was really conscious that I didn’t want to be writing the same poem over and over again though, so I kept pushing myself to make sure each poem took me in a new direction. 

About the interviewer
Laura Sygrove is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at the University of Leicester. She is an advance reader at DartFrog Books and writes for The Publishing Post. You can read some of her poems here, here and here. You can read a review by Laura of Eating Air by Suyin Du Bois on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Lee Wright of "New & Collected Poems" by Jeffrey Wainwright

Forty-eight years in the making, Jeffrey Wainwright’s New & Collected Poems takes us back. It begins in 1978 with his collection Heart’s Desire – a maiden voyage to bring love and war to the page, giving the reader every ounce of life’s frustration and elation. Wainwright allows the poems to spill from his pen like a gardener shaking earth from a bulb of garlic. 

In Selected Poems (1985), his verses are often as cold as sealskin, but it’s a cold we all must face, to understand what it is to feel human. Even the subject of love in Selected Poems barely moves grass. Love, like poetry, is present, but it doesn’t change the world. Wainwright remains tightly focused on the human mind. The poems wind around the reader like vines. He avoids happiness and instead writes of Thomas Müntzer, the deteriorating mental health of George III and dead sweethearts. What is in Wainwright’s mind cannot be touched. 

The Red-Headed Pupil (1994) is a gentle reminder that as the world changes, so we change. We are, as Wainwright points out, plasticine men, shaped by our surroundings. He asks the reader tenderly if they are content among the paving stones. 

The poems stretch from 1999 to the present day, and it is these newer poems that feel deeply personal. "Did you just give up and go" is a line I’ll never get over or forget. In another line he asks, "O my soul, where are you?" which is one of those questions we collect like scars on the body as we age. Is it possible to avoid becoming world-weary as we hold on to the years? Throughout New & Collected Poems, Wainwright is concerned with this question. And who will replace us when we’re gone? That too is something the collection left me asking.  

To borrow Wainwright’s line, "the fish in cold preserve their flesh," just as the ageing poet preserves his reputation in this collected works. 

About the reviewer

Dr Lee Wright holds a PhD from the University of Leicester in Creative Non-Fiction and has had numerous pieces of short fiction and non-fiction published. 

Review by Laura Sygrove of "Eating Air" by Suyin Du Bois

 

Suyin Du Bois’ debut poetry pamphlet is a tapestry of shared cultures, a smorgasbord of delectable delights and rough estimations; a rich blend of seasoned memories and flashes in the pan. Eating Air is complex, intimate, and oftentimes devastating; a journey into the past in an attempt to preserve the present, always just seconds out of reach.

Besides Du Bois’ poetry, I’ve thought of little else for weeks. Her work begs you to read the words aloud, to savour each syllable as the speaker savours each meal. Eating Air is a collection of flavour samples that dance on the tongue and settle in the pit of your stomach. Du Bois transports the reader across oceans to sit at low dining tables, folding meal trays at high altitude, beside hospital beds and roadside stalls, relishing the familiar taste of airline food and leftovers, sand-roasted chestnuts, French pastries, and makeshift noodle dinners.

For Du Bois, eating and writing are both acts of remembering and belonging, or of not quite belonging, and of longing itself. In her preface, she describes feeling poetry in her body in much the same way as food, where "certain combinations of words can have just the right mouthfeel." Food nourishes the body while carrying emotional and cultural memory. Poetry preserves that memory, remaking it through language: "I stir and stir like her until my spoon draws the right depths of lineage."

As a title, Eating Air feels both grounding and elusive, suggesting nourishment while gesturing towards something intangible: "store-bought surrogates," swaddled exports with their "layers thinned," family recipes spooned from jam jars for the very last time. Her work reads almost as a series of diary entries, reimagining transitory yet toothsome moments in a search for self through places, memories, and identities that resist easy definition.

Du Bois writes with complete transparency, embracing the discomfort of existing between cultures. She allows these tensions to remain unresolved, capturing the feeling of being both within and without. Her poems linger in that in-between space, searching for belonging without ever insisting upon certainty. My favourite line in the collection, "I insist we oil our bloodlines mackerel slick," is as tender as it is visceral, preserving heritage not as something fixed, but as something living and lovingly maintained. In Eating Air, nourishment is found not only in food, but in language and memory, and the act of returning to them.

About the reviewer
Laura Sygrove is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at the University of Leicester. She is an advance reader at DartFrog Books and writes for The Publishing Post. You can read some of her poems here, here and here.  

You can read more about Eating Air by Suyin Du Bois on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Saleh Razzouk of "Strangers" by Rebecca Ruth Gould

Strangers is a collection of short stories by Rebecca Ruth Gould, some of which first appeared in an earlier version under the longer title Strangers in Love. This new edition retains most of the original stories, with significant additions. As Gould writes in her prefatory note, these are stories of "lost bonds, fleeting connections, and relationships formed at a distance." While the first set of stories explored civilizational tensions—particularly encounters across East/West divides, often mediated through encounters that occasionally evolve into fleeting love affairs with inevitable dead ends—the new edition expands the thematic scope in two key directions.  

The first is the treatment of the cities the narrator visits, ranging from snow-covered English towns to the layered cityscapes of Tbilisi and Damascus, and finally to the scorching heat of Abu Dhabi. Between these climatic and cultural poles, Gould introduces readers to foreign lands through both direct experience and deep scholarship. 

In one particularly striking story, "Hands," Tehran emerges as a dystopian space, where the private and the political collapse into one another: "Strange how acts of affection, expressions of love, can be made into crimes." The story’s atmosphere is reminiscent of the surveilled worlds of Orwell’s 1984 and We, the prophetic novel by Russian dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin. 

This symbolic geography reaches its emotional peak in "When You Are Old," where Gould expresses deep affection for Tbilisi while sharply criticising the forces that have historically drained it of vitality. The narrative casts Tbilisi as a wounded yet dignified space, caught between imperial appetites and regional violence. The Tbilisi setting  grounds this historical imagination in architecture: "The blue and gold tiles covering the Blue Bath’s walls belonged to an age of peaceful exchanges between peoples of different faiths, languages, and ethnicities." The narrator’s voice here is not merely descriptive but accusatory, blending historical grievance with personal reverence.  

This shift does not mean that love has disappeared from the stories; rather, the love plots are increasingly shaped by questions of cultural translation, especially by the ways Arab and Middle Eastern cultures are represented, refracted, and sometimes misrecognised in English-language fiction. In "Speaking in Tongues," for example, intimacy itself becomes linguistic invention: "With time, they cultivated a language that only made sense to the two of them." The stories resist a superficial language of hybridity, in which East and West are folded too easily into coexistence, and instead insist on the  weight of historical and cultural difference. The story "Goodbye, Home" similarly underscores how the histories of peoples struggling under imperial appetites shape their present. 

The surface of travel and urban encounter, loosely bundled with love, politics, and culture, does not become documentary prose in the manner of Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. Instead, it moves closer to the autobiographical and politically observant fiction of Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, particularly his late novel Amricanly (2003), giving the autobiographical dimension greater informational density and archival texture.

A second dimension that sets this book apart  is its pedagogical impulse, which situates the individual within a longer cross-generational history. Gould’s characters are shaped by national histories, and guided not only by personal desire but also by conscience and civic duty. Her portrayal of the Middle East works through symbolic and affective registers. But the exile’s struggle to survive is often rendered through gestures such as a walk in the rain (as in "When You Are Old"), a few exchanged letters, or scripts written in what the story calls a "sleeping language." In these stories, languages do not simply die. They transform slowly, like energy, which neither disappears nor emerges from nothing.  

In this way, Strangers embodies both the outsider’s gaze and the passionate witness of a writer intent on preserving memory and dignity for oppressed peoples who have borne centuries of injustice.  

About the reviewer
Saleh Razzouk is a Syrian fiction writer, translator, and Associate Professor at the University of Aleppo. Born in Aleppo province in 1959, he was educated at Aleppo University and Gliwice Polytechnic in Poland, and also studied at Bolton Institute and the University of Nottingham in the UK. His first book was published by the Union of Arabic Writers in 1980, and his translations of contemporary poetry and literary criticism have appeared in Poetry International, Poetry London, The Bitter Oleander, and The Laurel Review.

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories," ed. Karen Stevens and Jonathan Taylor

At first glance, High Spirits appears to be an anthology united by a simple premise: stories in which alcohol plays a central role. Yet what soon becomes apparent is that this is far less a book about drink than it is about the people who drink, and the complicated lives that unfold around them. 

Stevens' and Taylor's comprehensive introduction is a critical essay in itself and hugely informative, in which they argue that "drunkenness is itself often a story," complete with a "beginning ... a middle ... and an end." It is a perceptive observation, for throughout, alcohol is rarely the subject itself. Rather, it becomes the catalyst through which loneliness, desire, memory, grief and hope are revealed.  

The anthology brings together an impressive range of contemporary writers, including both editors, Louis de Bernières, Jenn Ashworth, Alison Moore, Bethan Roberts and Desmond Barry, each bringing a distinctive voice and treatment of the premise. Some stories are comic, others unsettling; some quietly elegiac, others darkly surreal. 

One of its greatest strengths is its refusal to moralise. Drink is neither glamourised nor condemned. Instead, it’s presented as part of ordinary experience: a celebration, a habit, an escape, often a consolation, sometimes the beginning of connection and, more pointedly, the cause of its collapse. The emotional range is striking, allowing humour to sit comfortably beside vulnerability and loss. Jenn Ashworth's "Jackie Kennedy and the Widow" offers an unflinching meditation on grief, while Michael Stewart's "Painting the Walls White" explores memory and disorientation through themes of forgetting and losing one's way. Melanie Whipman's "Tasting Notes" provides another distinctive voice, demonstrating how drink can become less a subject than a lens through which relationships and identity are examined.

What emerges is a portrait of contemporary life in all its contradictions. These are stories of imperfect lives, where moments of celebration sit uneasily alongside loneliness, regret and longing. Shared drinks become occasions for confession, confrontation and reconciliation; solitary ones speak of absence and loss. Throughout, alcohol functions not as the subject but as a catalyst, bringing into sharp relief those fragile aspects of ourselves we usually keep hidden. 

It’s easy to see why High Spirits won the 2019 Saboteur Award for Best Anthology. It matures beautifully as it unfolds. Individual stories possess their own distinct flavour, yet together they create something richer than the sum of their parts. Like a conversation that grows more candid as the evening wears on, these stories remain in the mind long after the final shot, inviting readers back for the richness of their voices and the truths they quietly reveal about what it is to be both human and fallible. Intoxicating stuff. 

About the reviewer
Dr Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer. His interests include dystopian literature, queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and fiction titles he recently worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press in 2022, and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity was published by The History Press (June 2026), to great acclaim.

Review by Isabelle McIntyre of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

If you hadn’t already clocked from the title, Demon Copperhead is inspired by Charles Dickens’ partly autobiographical David Copperfield, published in 1850 and a personal favourite of Dickens among his own novels. Kingsolver has created a truly visionary re-envisioning, following the original plot almost to the letter but in a cleverly modernised format: swapping the workhouse for meth labs, Victorian charity schools for foster care, industrial exploitation for the opioid epidemic, cobblestone streets for Dollar Generals as our protagonist narrates his life from childhood to maturity, chronicling the highs and lows (and they are low) of his upbringing in modern day Appalachia.

Our main character has been dealt an extremely unlucky hand. Just when you think Demon is at rock bottom, the bottom bottoms out. I particularly loved the line "The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between." Yet what struck me about Demon’s endless struggles was how refreshing it was to see him portrayed, not as a martyr for foster kids or poster-boy for poverty, but as a human being that was often bitter, vengeful, acerbic, and angry at his fate. Through it all, Demon is not perfect, he is fallible, exhausted by the uphill battle of his life, yet always incredibly resilient. For me, the sentiment behind his indomitable spirit hit home in regards to my own experiences in life, from losing my own mother and a plethora of other personal challenges.

For 550 wild and wonderful pages, Demon’s unfortunate reality is your reality. No matter how much we want to pretend that we can keep the bad fortune at bay and protect our privilege through our own virtue, this novel is an intense reminder that we are all at the mercy of sheer dumb luck – and we don’t have to be happy about it, despite what toxic positivity self-help books would tell you. I’d love to personally thank Barbara Kingsolver for writing this nuanced and compassionate book as I genuinely believe it’s one of those novels that changes the way you think forever. Isn’t that what reading books is about? To escape your own life to step into someone else’s shoes, and come back all the better for it. 

About the reviewer
Isabelle McIntyre is a publishing hopeful and currently working as a Bookseller with Waterstones. She reads a wide variety of titles but particularly enjoys literary fiction, with some her of favourite authors including Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver, John Boyne, Lionel Shriver, and Joanna Glen. She has a BA in Politics and Spanish and takes pleasure in engaging with a range of international and political perspectives in her reading and the Substack blog she writes, Read Receipts.

Review by Isabelle McIntyre of "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

East of Eden is one of the most divisive modern classics going. Its intensity has created two opposing camps - those who love it, and those who hate it – for there is simply no middle ground when it comes to this legendary family saga. I confess myself firmly in the "love it" camp, devouring the whopping 700 pages in just under two weeks and it has remained in my mind ever since. 

I would argue that the beauty of this novel is its pacing. It’s long – in fact, the vast majority of East of Eden is a garrulous and digressive labyrinth of several generations of side plots, monologuing, and contextual development. Yet, in our impatient modern world where we need everything faster and faster, craving instant gratification and battling ever shorter attention spans, East of Eden takes its time. It plods. It meanders. It stands atop the hill and enjoys the view. 

Specifically, the view of the Salinas Valley. One of the most primary and widely acknowledged achievements of East of Eden is its ability to bottle the sights, sounds, and smells of the Californian "salad bowl" region, so named because of its agricultural wonders and fertile soil. Steinbeck had a deep love of place, endeavouring to capture on the page both the breath-taking scenery of his homeland, as well as the human history behind the hardships of a rural existence and the complexities of agrarian development. In the two major families in East of Eden, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, Steinbeck weaves personal history with the broader narrative of the region. Despite having never set foot in the state, I was overwhelmed with a sensory overload of the Salinas Valley through his poetic homage to the area, starting from the very first page. 

I also adored the sprawling, tapestry-esque depiction of families, with all their flaws and quirks and eccentricities. I gasped aloud at the descriptions of the characters, because it was as if I was hearing my own abstract thoughts articulated into beautiful, expressive prose. I had shivers at the idea that a person who died half a century before I was even born could possibly have written down a thought that I had once had, whose words could speak to a feeling I imagined only I knew.

Furthermore, I think the overwhelming spiritual essence of the book is its defining feature. For me, it transcends your everyday books into the realm of the classic, the American mythos, the literary greats. It feels almost primordial. East of Eden is about interrogating human nature and finding the abiding human spirit, and that is simply a big old topic, and it feels deep and intense despite the whimsical prose and eccentric characters. Steinbeck carries you along his narrative river, sweeping you up in the gentle flow of rich world-building, and then drops you off the edge of the metaphorical waterfall with a bewildering, visceral nugget of wisdom that elevates this book far beyond a restrictive literary agenda.

In summary, I loved East of Eden. Straight to the top 5. It did everything a book should - it made me laugh, made me cry, made me think, most importantly it made me feel. It’s inspired me to read more modern classics and release them from the shackles of sleepy English Literature classes world over, because this book felt modern, important, and completely unique.

About the reviewer
Isabelle McIntyre is a publishing hopeful and currently working as a Bookseller with Waterstones. She reads a wide variety of titles but particularly enjoys literary fiction, with some her of favourite authors including Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver, John Boyne, Lionel Shriver, and Joanna Glen. She has a BA in Politics and Spanish and takes pleasure in engaging with a range of international and political perspectives in her reading and the Substack blog she writes, Read Receipts.

Review by Jasper Sygrove of "The Cherry Tree Theory" by Rich & Rox Pink

The Cherry Tree Theory is a beautifully written and deeply reflective book, which uses the real-time revival of a once-dying cherry tree as a powerful metaphor for personal growth and healing. After moving in together, Rich and Rox Pink revisit some of the darkest chapters of their lives, while pouring their love into nurturing a rich, fruitful garden. The Cherry Tree Theory creates a moving parallel between nature’s resilience and the human capacity to recover, adapt, and thrive.

The metaphors woven throughout the book are thoughtful, relatable, and leave you with plenty to reflect on. From setting healthy boundaries to rebuilding after difficult experiences, the lessons feel authentic and nuanced. The story gently reminds us that growth is rarely linear, but with patience, care, and perseverance, it's possible to create the future we've always hoped for.

While everyone's experiences are different and not every story will resonate with every reader, the underlying message is universal: there is always light at the end of the tunnel. I finished this book feeling inspired, motivated, and more optimistic about embracing life's challenges. This is a heartfelt, uplifting read that lingers in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page.

If you're curious but not quite ready to dive into the book, Rich and Rox Pink have also created a short companion episode as part of their podcast series "Late Bloomers," with each chapter summarised in 60 seconds or less. It's a brilliant introduction that offers a flavour of what's to come, without giving away the heart of the journey.

About the reviewer
Jasper Sygrove is a 27-year-old trans content creator, music producer, and cosplayer, with a lifelong passion for all things nerdy. From TV shows and movies, to video games and books, Jasper loves discovering and discussing the stories that leave a lasting impression. As a new reviewer, Jasper is excited to share honest, thoughtful reviews, and connect with others who enjoy exploring the worlds of entertainment and storytelling.

Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Monstrum" by Lottie Mills

I read Lottie Mills’ debut collection Monstrum in a couple of sittings. The stories are that good! They explore what is monstrous, and what we may perceive as otherness. They challenge the reader and society to re-examine all of our deep rooted assumptions. Every single beautifully crafted story is an eerie, gripping and alluring message to our world. And each is unequivocally strong in its own right, unique but connected through the theme of disability and the monstrous, because Mills shows us that being different doesn’t mean we are worse than what might be perceived as the norm. It might be that Monstrum isn’t for every reader, but it is worth every reader having a go. 

"The Mirror" shows a young girl doing the shopping for her supposedly monstrous mistress. Through her small acts of kindness, she makes the relationship work and rejects this conception of monstrosity. There is an implied sexual relationship in the story, and a poignant ending. 

"The Changeling," the opening story, sticks with the reader long after they finish and we can see why it was a prize winner. It’s a sublime, ethereal tale about deformity and physical change, and asks what are our expectations of what we see as normal. The writing is evocative and clear. 

In "The Cuckoo," as the title implies, we are confronted by a strange child who infiltrates a household, and removes the protagonist from her own life with weird ease. This is psychological horror story demonstrating the terror of being replaced, unseen, unprotected. 

"The Body" features a particularly belligerent attitude towards disability. It is set in a world where you can ask for, or purchase a new body. The main character in this story finds it difficult to let go of her old body and struggles to cope with the physical changes that come with a new non-disabled body. When she uses her old wheelchair, it is a particularly discordant moment. She finds that her new, whole body no longer has the muscle memory her original one had, and she is forced to relearn much of what used to be  habitual, her own "normal." Mills never takes the easy way out. She examines how this is not an easy solution and the myriad struggles that it brings with it. The main character is confronted when others find out about her original disabled body, and the complex relationship she now has with the new body.

Mills has shown the reader a world where inhumanity often comes from the ordinary, and where we can see kindness and warmth in those that we have been taught to fear. The result is a beautifully strong collection of stories that are heartbreaking at times as well as being intellectually rigorous, and written in prose that is so pure that it is almost perfection. Monstrum is a critical, politically sensitive piece of disability literature disguised as gothic nightmare, grotesque theatre. Mills invites us into her darkness, and we cannot escape, demanding we see the beauty, potential, power and provocation flourishing there. It is a dazzling, remarkable debut.

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 69. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

Review by Anupriya Sisodia of "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

She didn’t just appear on my reading list. She stormed in, a living scandal in emerald silk, lips unapologetically red. 

When I started The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugou, I expected nothing more than glamor, gossip, and old-Hollywood fantasy: a familiar, dramatic, romantic escape. I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into, but I was completely wrong. The book gave me all that, plus an entertaining glimpse into scandalous fame, and then surprised me by delivering crushing sorrow and dazzling hope in equal measure. 

From the very first lines, Evelyn Hugo caught my attention with a magnetic, almost dangerous grip, a presence so dynamic I could feel her reaching off the page, refusing to let me go. She was never soft or gentle, and not always easy to like. Still, I found myself rooting for her, even when sometimes her choices left scorched earth behind. She never begged for love. She was ambition incarnate, sharp, strategic, stubborn, brave, and sometimes selfish in ways that cut uncomfortably close to reality.

What drew me in even more was her strong desire for control. She wanted fame, freedom, love, security, and power in a world where women paid a price for ambition. Her life was full of choices that blurred the line between right and wrong, and the book didn’t offer easy answers; it just simply laid bare the consequences. Evelyn felt less like a fictional character and more like a real Hollywood legend, both adored and judged, sculpted into an icon before being seen as a person and never truly understood. 

Evelyn shares her life story through interviews with journalist Monique Grant, and this storytelling style is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. The format made everything feel startlingly real and personal, almost like hearing a confession you weren’t supposed to hear, but there you were, sitting across from Evelyn Hugo herself, mascara slightly smudged, voice calm but dangerous, as she finally decided to tell the truth she buried for decades. With magazine clippings and flashbacks, the story started to feel like real history. It truly seemed as if Evelyn Hugo could have existed in Hollywood, or that someone like her did, and I was learning the truth behind years of glamorous, messy rumours.

Despite the title, this story isn’t really about the seven husbands. Each was just a mirror, a season, a chapter in Evelyn’s life, never the main focus or a big romance. Some marriages were planned, others were for convenience or were performances for an industry trying to control her. But none ever defined or truly possessed her. They simply revolved around her, showing the many versions she had to create to survive in a world that expected women to give up pieces of themselves to succeed.

Spoiler alert: the true heartbreak in the story was Celia St. James. Their love story blindsided me and left me deeply moved. Their passion was a wildfire: wild, beautiful, intense, all-consuming, and utterly devastating. They kept coming back to each other, even though pride, fear, and timing kept pulling them apart. Every reunion sparked hope, every parting left a hollow ache. It was a love so desperate, so human, that it haunted me. Love was a knife, and the world never let them put it down, reminding me that love alone was never enough to save us, especially in a world that never played fair with women. 

Then there is Harry Cameron, who was one of Evelyn’s husbands and a steady and loyal friend to her. A calm in her storm. His kindness and friendship grounded her, so when he died, the grief was overwhelming. I remember staring at the page, shocked, because his loss hurt far more than I ever expected.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is dazzling, sharp, heartbreaking, and unflinchingly honest. It made me laugh, feel pain, and even brought me to tears. Most of all, it showed me that people are never just one thing. We are a storm of contradictions. We all have wounds, dreams, hope, and heartbreak. And this book never lets Evelyn Hugo be easily defined or caged by labels. She is grief, ambition, raw longing, defiant love, and relentless survival all at once. By the end, the woman in emerald silk refused to be just a headline. She demanded to be remembered as a person: flawed, fierce, complicated, and unapologetically herself. 

And long after I closed the book, she stayed with me. I know she always will.

About the interviewer 
Anupriya Sisodia is a published romance fiction author, pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is an avid reader who loves writing stories with realistic, relatable characters who embark on emotional and exciting journeys toward happily-ever-afters.

This review was awarded an "honorable mention" in our 2026 Student Book Review Competition, held in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. 

Review by Olivia Peachey of "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L. Peck

Once I finally had the chance to read Steven L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell, I devoured the whole 100-pages-or-so in an evening. Peck’s existential tragedy did not disappoint.

The work is predicated on the idea of a Hell (indeed, I found the novel through a list of unique fictional Hells) that is neither eternal nor violent – in fact it provides everything its inhabitants need. It also contains, however, endless rows and floors of bookshelves: this Hell is a Library of Babel, with one of every book that has been written and could ever be written – meaning more books than there are atoms in our universe. Those within the library can only leave once they find a book that contains their complete life story, without spelling or grammar errors.

The book does not humour the goal of finding one’s life story in this library as a narrative end-goal. Rather, it’s how the humans trapped in this Hell act, and how the story is structured, that reveals the narrative’s true purpose – a meditation on the meaning of eternity, and the effects of such endless monotony on a human’s psyche. The novella sees its protagonist, Soren, reflect from billions of years in the future, establishing that everything he goes on to describe in his first weeks, centuries, and millennia in Hell are from aeons in the past. The initial hope the human prisoners feel in the first days are tinged with doom, which plays out in slow-motion as Peck jumps around Soren’s long, long afterlife.

As the novellas catches up with Soren’s present reflections, he reveals that he has done less in millions on billions of years than he did in a thousand with the people he loved and lost to the bookshelf mazes. The detailed description of human innovations, societies, cults, expeditions, celebrations, etc. fall away as the book nears its close, fulfilling the awful terror spelled out by its introductory pages; the book opens with a man in utter defeat, and pulls the reader along the journey that got him there without a single unnecessary detail, only a careful erosion of hope on a scale like infinity – even if Soren’s life does not even scrape infinity, a fact terrifying by itself.

With its deft use of structure and stark, uncomplicated prose, A Short Stay in Hell is as worthy an interpretation of Hell as any.

About the reviewer
Olivia Peachey is an English undergraduate at the University of Leicester. She’s written professionally for sites such as Game Rant and Dualshockers while focusing on writing poetry in her free time, much of which has also been published online.

This review was awarded an "honorable mention" in our 2026 Student Book Review Competition, held in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. 

Review by Rim Asma Khalifa of "And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini is an author who doesn't just tell a story but writes about lives marked by tragedy. I have recently come to enjoy his book And the Mountain Echoed, which follows the relationship between Abdullah and Pari, two inseparable siblings who care deeply for each other, with no mother and a father who struggles to give them a life in Afghanistan. Abdullah will always bring a smile to Pari's face, even if it's a small feather that brings her happiness in the journey of loss and fate.

This book differs from Hosseini's other works, as each chapter follows a different character from a different perspective, exploring their fragmented lives and how they connect to the main plot. This gave insight into how others perceive themselves and how they feel about the varied challenges they face. One character I found myself feeling particular empathy for was Parwana (Abdullah and Pari’s stepmother). She was a character I didn’t like initially; in fact, her actions made me think she was horrible. However, reading about her childhood and the major decision she made weighed heavily on the rest of the book.

Moreover, I greatly enjoyed the sibling relationship that Pari and Abduallah shared. It reminded me of my brother a lot and how he cared for me. The writing conveyed his deep affection for his sister and his longing for a better life for her. Abduallah is not only a selfless character but also one who matured even at a young age. The situation he faces is disastrous, but Hosseini always makes it clear that hope lies with these characters.

Overall, this book tells a deep story that will make you long for more. It captures love, relationships, family, and pain that will make you cry for the characters' lives.

About the reviewer
Rim Asma Khalifa is an undergraduate BA English student from the University of Leicester. She enjoys reading, shopping, and crafting story ideas.

This review was awarded an "honorable mention" in our 2026 Student Book Review Competition, held in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. 

Review by Aamani Bommareddy of "Vicky Angel" by Jacqueline Wilson

"I shut my eyes but I can still hear her. I put my hands over my ears but I can still hear her. I can run and run and run but I’ll never be able to get away from her." Jacqueline Wilson’s poignant children's novel Vicky Angel follows fourteen-year-old Jade Marshall as she navigates life after her best friend Vicky’s death; but burdened by feelings of guilt and unable to accept the reality of Vicky’s cruelty towards her, she begins seeing Vicky’s ghost, who wreaks havoc on her life and relationships. With simple and effective writing, Jade’s (painfully relatable) voice is allowed to shine through the narrative; and all her innermost thoughts and emotions, in their truest and ugliest forms, are laid bare.

What made the story most rewarding to read, even as an adult, was Wilson’s resistance to writing characters that fit neatly into moralistic boxes, instead painting the story in the shades of grey that colour real human experiences. Jade’s mum can be neglectful and ignorant but also comes to her support, leading to some of the most heartwarming moments of genuine happiness for Jade. And although Jade’s journey with grief and mental health is complicated by the growing realization of Vicky’s ill-treatment towards her, we’re reminded to separate the real Vicky from the villainous spirit taking her form in Jade’s mind, exaggerated by guilt and poor self-esteem.

For a short novel, Wilson manages to build a set of characters so rich with backstory, that reading it feels like experiencing the real world through Jade’s eyes – in all its messiness and imperfection and warmth and wonder. So, when Jade is finally ready to move on, and Vicky Angel "flaps wings as white as swansdown, waves one last time, and flies away," we can trust that they will be there for her as she starts her new life.

About the reviewer
Aamani Bommareddy is currently an undergraduate student of Journalism and Creative
Writing at the University of Leicester, with a particular interest in literature and music.
Along with journalistic articles and features, she enjoys writing short stories. 

This review was awarded an "honorable mention" in our 2026 Student Book Review Competition, held in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. 

Review by Charlie Black of "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell

Orwell delivers a gripping and insightful read in this human, politically sharp and dare I say hopeful account of his time serving the anti-fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell joins a militia soon after arriving in revolutionary Barcelona. What he thinks is a trivial choice soon has ramifications as the ideologies of each faction begin to cause friction, whether for power or moral integrity.

Orwell conveys this web of ideologies well. He names the militias but gives little explanation to their allegiances at first, evoking his own confusion, since he did not even know the philosophy of his own militia until long after he joined. Further confusion is created as he travels back and forth to the many places he is posted. Orwell seems to have the lay of the land but as somebody unfamiliar with Spain’s geography I was often left disorientated. Orwell never loses sight of the human tragedy at the heart of war. In his essay "Looking back on the Spanish war," which served as an epilogue in my copy, he ends with a verse in dedication to a soldier he met in Barcelona.

Regardless of this, Orwell still offers superb analysis of the clashes between these ideologically driven militias. It is clear where his sympathies lie but he provides fair criticism to all. Orwell is, as usual, superbly articulate, often humorous, and astonishingly relevant. It is the sections of socio-political analysis, using the context of Spain to make broader statements about fascism, socialism, and class, that kept me reading. Orwell reminds us that fascism is unsustainable; it is the working class it needs but the working class it will always betray.

What caught me by surprise was how being in the mind of someone living through the lead up to the Second World War connected with me. We live in a turbulent time, and to hear from someone living through a similarly uncertain period was oddly comforting. We are not alone in our disdain for the world. It reminds us that although many then were in the "deep, deep sleep of England," as many are now, there were those like Orwell who saw what was happening inside and outside of the country and stood against it.

I would recommend anybody who is feeling anxious about the state of the world to read Homage to Catalonia, if only for the reassurance that failure does not mean the end.

About the reviewer
Charlie Black is a mature student working towards a BA in English with Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. He really enjoys fantasy and science fiction but will read just about anything.

This review won second prize in our 2026 Book Review Competition, held in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester.