Wulf's Book Reviews

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not the heartbreak of coming back, but the origin story I did not really need I opened my review of the first instalment, “ Every Heart a Doorway ”, with the line “Not the fantasy of going through the door, but the heartbreak of coming back.” “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” turns that idea inside out. This time, Seanan McGuire gives us the fantasy of going through the door, tracing the origins of Jack and Jill in a story that reaches for the shape, logic, and menace of a fairy tale. For me, though, that shift is precisely where the novella loses some of what made its predecessor so affecting. » On the day our story truly starts « That line captures one of my main frustrations with the book. By the time the story “truly” starts, more than a fifth of the novella has already passed, and I felt that delay. I understood what McGuire was trying to do by showing the damage inflicted on the sisters before they ever ...

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer My rating: 4 of 5 stars I found "Annie Bot" deeply unsettling, and I mean that as praise. This is not a comfortable novel, nor should it be. Sierra Greer builds Annie’s world around a premise that is immediately cruel, a sentient artificial woman designed to please a man who wants obedience, reassurance, and sexual availability without ever having to recognise the full personhood of the being in front of him. Doug is monstrous not because he is extravagant in his evil, but because he is so recognisably entitled, selfish, and certain that Annie exists for him. I loathed him from the start, and the novel is strongest whenever it forces that revulsion into the foreground. What made the book painful to read, in the best sense, was Annie’s growing awareness of her own lack of choice. Every decision she makes is constrained by systems of control, punishment, and dependence, which means even small acts of thought or resistance carry emotional weight. Gr...

Platform Decay by Martha Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars Platform Decay should have felt like a homecoming. Instead, it feels like being shoved out of an airlock and told to keep up. I absolutely loved Murderbot at its best. The early books worked because the action was never really the point, or at least never the whole point. The point was the anxious, avoidant, furious, funny, traumatised self hiding underneath the armour. Murderbot was compelling because every mission doubled as self-exploration: what does freedom mean, what does personhood mean, what does friendship mean when even admitting you have friends feels like an exposed nerve? "Platform Decay" knows that version of the series still exists, but it only lets us see it in flashes. » ”SecUnit.” « That one word, from Mensah, carries more emotional weight than whole stretches of the surrounding plot. Likewise, the late moment where Murderbot acknowledges being surrounded by friends is exactly the sort of subtle, painf...

Bred and Butter by Heather Lauren My rating: 1 of 5 stars Bred and Butter is a (thankfully!) short, kinky romance that I wanted to enjoy on its own terms: tight focus, brisk heat, and a sense that the author knows exactly which emotional buttons to press. Instead, I spent most of my time wincing at sentences that seem not merely unpolished, but unproofread, and the story itself never gives me enough character, wit, or tension to compensate. » Who’s laugh makes me smile « That is the problem in miniature: basic grammar slips, and the voice does not feel intentional enough to turn roughness into style. Even the erotic imagery strains for intensity in ways that land oddly chosen rather than charged. » The sight of her painted body withering beneath me is stunning. « Yes, withering. Under him. As if desire were a draught, and her body was a sad little plant being left to crisp at the windowsill. That single word does not heighten anything, it suffocates it. It turns sex into horticultural...

Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a quick, spicy, unapologetically nerdy enemies-to-lovers novella, and it works because it keeps the conflict personal, specific, and relentlessly in the same room. » I am as certain of their love as I am of the binary code. « Two rival game studios get pushed into a forced collaboration, and then into a December “team retreat” at a cabin that feels like corporate captivity with snow outside and tension indoors. The heroine is a designer who cares about characters and story; the hero is all action-adventure polish, and she keeps trying to pretend their history is just professional rivalry, when it plainly isn’t. The best part is the slow re-framing of him: the silence that reads as disdain at first, then as restraint, then as something like carefulness. The chemistry is sharp, the humour doesn’t overstay its welcome, and when the emotional turn happens, it feels earned rather than dumped in at the end. My one actual “note t...

Dashing All the Way by Chelsea Curto My rating: 5 of 5 stars I don’t like novellas. They’re mostly too short to make any kind of impact and simply aren’t enough of a “bite”. At best, they’re like chewing gum. So it was out of pure curiosity that I decided to read “ Dashing All the Way ”, a novella by Chelsea Curto , after it got heartily endorsed by Samantha Brinn (whom you should know as an author for her great “ When I'm With You ”). The story is simple: Being told what she cannot do by her now-ex-boyfriend, Jeremy, Margo moves to accomplish just that, and, in the process, falls for his father, Finn—just in time for Christmas. What follows is the warm-hearted, sometimes raw, and always honest tale of how a one-night stand evolves into something very different over the course of two weeks. It is nicely told, well-paced, and very, very steamy. Nothing feels out of place, everything makes sense, there’s just enough story to satisfy my reading needs, and an amusing inevitab...