Macha on Monday

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

After enjoying Hot Chocolate on Thursday so much, there was no way that I could not close the cover on it and not dive right into its companion novel, Macha on Monday.

The Marble Café in Tokyo is an assuming place. One might even miss it if they were not looking properly. Yet so many people can trace defining moments in their lives back to the café and its mysterious founder, Maestro. A tea merchant finds love, a kamishibai performer expresses her feelings to her standoffish grandmother, a socially awkward young man looks at his classmate hierarchy a little differently, and a cat listens as an old second-hand book seller tells it about the Tanabata Star Festival. Dreams, desires, needs, and the means to fulfill them, sometimes all that’s needed to achieve them is a place to sit and gather one’s thoughts.

The ripples that were established in Hot Chocolate on Thursday have reached further and Macha On Monday tells a fresh batch of uplifting stories from characters in Kyoto who have ties to Marble Café and Maestro. The story progression follows the same flow as its predecessor, this time with the chapters telling a story from each month over the course of a year. Stronger themes of social anxiety, traditional vs modern attitudes, and self-discovery and acceptance colour the stories, still achieving the uplifting feels that flavoured the first book, though a little more forcefully.

The prose is simple with the perfect number of descriptive phrases that conjure the visual scene in the reader’s mind, making the book completely enveloping and creating a mind-space in which the reader can breathe and become aware of their own state of being; mental, emotional, physical etc. That is the power of these types of novels, what makes them so special, important, and enjoyable.

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

While I enjoyed its predecessor a lot more, Macha on Monday is a book that still brightened my week and made it easier to breathe through. A delightful read.

Author: Michiko Aoyama, 2021. Translated by E. Madison Shimoda.

Published: Original Japanese edition published by Takarajimasha Inc., Tokyo. First published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, 2026.

Hot Chocolate on Thursday

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While the saying goes, ‘you can never have too much of a good thing’, we all know this is false. Everything in moderation is a much healthier mantra to live by. After the slightly amusing but overly unimpressive Throne in the Dark, I felt it was definitely time to take a step away from fantasy for a bit, so this week I have moved on a little bout of cosy, Japanese, slice-of-life fiction.

Tucked away amid the cherry blossoms along a river in Tokyo sits the Marble Café. It’s a quaint and cosy place where one can have a hot drink, pass the time, and perhaps have a special encounter. Here, a woman sips hot chocolate while writing a letter to her pen pal. The manager admires her from afar. A working mother makes plans for her son’s lunch, while a friend quickly rushes out to buy another friend something blue for her wedding. Life is made up of meetings and moments, many of which seem so insignificant but end up making the biggest differences in our lives.

Japanese slice-of-life novels are fast becoming my new favourite genre for cosy, recreational reading. There is something about the uplifting collection of short stories centred around a specific location that has the power to really pull me out of any life-funk that I’m on the verge of slipping into. Hot Chocolate on Thursday definitely did this for me. It’s a sweet and wholesome collection of stories, each one a different chapter with a colour as a narrative focal point, that hold nothing in common with each other but the fact that the characters are each somehow linked to Marble Café or its mysterious founder, the Maestro.

Despite the absence of a central plot, there is a definite flow in the progression of each story, as every chapter is a tale told from the point of view of a person we met in the previous chapter. Messages of work-life balance, love, and the health benefits of shifting perspectives fill every page to make the book a warm and gentle reminder that even though the anxieties of life can become overwhelming, they can be broken down piece by piece and everything can be OK in the end. The lightest touch can disturb a still body of water and this book really plays with that image but instead of disturbing calm, it’s rippling common life problems and reshaping them so that the characters (and the reader) can see them differently and change the way they respond to them.

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

Hot Chocolate on Thursday is a warm, soothing, and delightful book. It really is like a cup of chocolate: a smooth procession of stories that are tinted with a slight bitterness but are then overcome with a spreading sweetness that manages to reach every part of the body and mind. I absolutely adored it!

Author: Michiko Aoyama, 2017. Translated by E. Madison Shimoda.

Published: Original Japanese edition published by Takarajimasha Inc., Tokyo. First published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, 2026.

Villains & Virtues: Throne in the Dark

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While I absolutely adored the scenic and mouth-watering excursions around Taiwan that was Taiwan Travelogue, with bookclub postponed for a month, it should come as no surprise that I dove right back into fantasy the first moment I got. I was gifted A.K Caggiano’s Throne in the Dark by a very dear friend back in June and now having finished it I am keen to get her on the phone for a little bookclub to hear her thoughts on it.

Watching films and reading books that are recommended by close friends is another unique and fascinating experience that humans get to enjoy and navigate. Of course it’s different for everyone, but I personally find that my reading experience is already shaped a little by the fact that I’m diving into a book that a friend with similar tastes has read and enjoyed enough to share with me. There’s a sense of obligation to put in the effort and read the whole thing, even if you struggle or find that the writing is not working for you. Then there are character and narrative choices that you can’t help but wonder, ‘did she like this bit or also find it predictable?’.

Damian Maleficus Bloodthorne is a powerful bloodmage who has just completed his life’s work, to create the most powerful talisman of enthrallment history has ever known. With it, he can finally fulfil his destiny to release his demonic father from imprisonment so that darkness and villainy can cover all the world. Well, that was the plan until he runs into a pretty little thief called Amma who accidentally becomes the harbouring vessel for the talisman. Stuck dragging Amma across the land and trying to find a way to remove the talisman, Damien’s concrete plans have started to crumble. Even more so when Amma’s caring nature and bubby demeanor starts to stir up feelings in Damien that contend with the usual ones of villainy and malevolence.

It’s worth nothing that reading the Author’s Note at the end of the book can sometimes help to alleviate the negative feelings you have about the work or help you to better understand what the author was trying to achieve. This was certainly the case for me with this book. I originally thought that this was going to be another YA fantasy romance to join the ranks of the Scholomance or Little Thieves trilogies in my library, when actually it’s a little bit closer to Once Upon a Broken Heart (though not as enthralling). According to Caggiano’s note at the end, Throne in the Dark was supposed to be a standalone parody, but became something bigger as, “the sincerity of the story insisted on seeping through the cracks in the absurdity”.

Knowing this made it a lot easier to understand some of the tonal choices that were made throughout the prose and helped to alleviate some of the annoyance that I had with it. Unlike Once Upon a Broken Heart where the writing is so overloaded with syrupy adjectives that it can’t be anything BUT a piss-take, the prose in Throne in the Dark is blunt and descriptive with smarmy and whimsical asides that break up the narrative flow to ensure the reader is in on the joke. There are many moments in which the author’s voice can be clearly heard making metafictive remarks on the genre, not to mention the vague, summarizing chapter names. While I can appreciate the intent behind these choices, I personally felt that it didn’t really add anything to the story, merely stopped its trajectory for a breather.

Then we have the caricatured characters of Damiel and Amma. Their central romance story is pretty predictable and even though Amma’s motives remain a mystery until the third act, I still picked what was coming pretty early on. The chapters flip between the perspectives of Amma and Damien while still being written in the third person omniscient. This works perfectly well, but I would have liked it if there was a little more insight into their characters. Annoyingly, we don’t really get a sense of who these characters are and what they feel, their story is sort of written in a hand-wavey way that rides on them being token genre pieces.

Because the humour does not really come across as obviously or early as one would like, these tonal choices and the caricature protagonists just prove to be a little bit annoying and make it easy to put the book down. Had I known from that start that it’s meant to be a parody, I might not have felt as strongly – though probably still a little annoyed because it now feels a little bit lazy to let everything ride on, ‘ah but that’s the joke’.

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

Having said this, the story itself is actually kind of compelling and I am definitely interested in the fantasy world that Caggiano has created. There are supporting characters that are truly fascinating and a whole bunch of lore that only gets hinted at throughout the tale. While I realise that the exposition dump is not a preferable means of learning about the world, there are ways in which to make them more interesting and when used to educate readers about the world they find themselves in, they can make stories even more compelling. It's also a very visual world and story: honestly, it would probably do very well as an anime.

Throne in the Dark is not a bad book, it’s a solid fantasy story that has some very memorable scenes. But in a rapidly expanding subgenre like YA fanta-roms, a book that is mildly amusing with unsubstantial characters can fall into obscurity. It was interesting enough to get me through the entire thing (which is 500+ pages), but I didn’t experience any strong feelings while reading it and did find it easy to put down and walk away from. I have not decided if I will continue with series.

Author: A.K Caggiano, 2022-2025

Published: Sourcebooks, Casablanca, 2025

Throne in the Dark is the first book in A.K. Caggiano's Villains & Virtues series.

Taiwan Travelogue

Image credit: Scribe Publications

Well, after weeks of going heavy on the cosy, fantasy reads, we have finally travelled somewhere a lot closer to home and am now reveling in the heady jetlag that comes from closing the cover on an immersive book. Cutting it a bit fine, seeing as we are meeting to discuss this tomorrow, I have just closed the cover on this month’s bookclub read: Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi.

It is May 1938 and Japanese woman author Aoyama Chizuko has arrived in Taiwan, invited by the colonial government to write a series of travelogue essays, even though she is personally indifferent and sometimes against their agenda. She determines to experience and devour authentic island life in every sense of the word, but fears this will be impossible with her assigned assistant/interpreter. Expressing these concerns to her hostess, she is then introduced to the charming, meticulous, and incomprehensible Chizuru, who quickly becomes her interpreter and guide. Over meals of winter melon tea, braised minced pork, silver needle vermicelli, and leftover soup, Chizuko becomes infatuated with Chizuru, but is kept at arm’s length for reasons that only become apparent after a painful separation.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text, Taiwan Travelogue is a gorgeous story about a beautiful relationship between two women while also being an immersive cultural exploration of history, language, power dynamics, and of course, food.  It’s an homage to the episodes of self-discovery that can occur only when you travel and stay with you for the rest of your life. I found it inspiring, engaging, and beautiful.

An accessible, academic, and yet poetic prose flavours the pages and completely envelopes the reader in the landscape as well as intimacies that come with sharing a meal. Each chapter is defined by a specific dish that accompanies a significant event in the story and the footnotes serve to cleanse the palette by breaking the narrative flow with academic flavours as well as further establishing the landscape in which we find ourselves.

Image credit: The Booker Prizes

Taiwan Travelogue is immersive and insightful and it very much has made me want to be more adventurous in the kitchen! It’s one of those books that makes you consider yourself a little more closely and from different angles, a truly beautiful and inspiring piece of fiction.

Author: Yang Shuang-zi, 2020

Translation: English translation from Mandarin by Lin King, 2024

Published: Springhill Publishing, Taiwan 2020. This edition published by Scribe Publications, ANZ, 2026.

Bookshops & Bonedust

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Still very much entrenched in the world of high fantasy and low stakes, I have just closed the cover of Travis Baldree’s prequel to Legends & Lattes: Bookshops & Bonedust – a cosy story of high fantasy about first loves and second-hand books.

Viv’s brutally glamorous career as a mercenary is just taking off. But it’s a fact of life that disaster always strikes just when things are getting good. Running with a renowned mercenary group called Rackham’s Ravens Viv is badly injured during a hunt for a fearsome necromancer, and she finds herself stranded in the sleepy seaside town of Murk to recuperate. Laid up with a bad leg and a growing fear that she might not be able to return to the action, what’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do? Spending time in a struggling bookshop is certainly not how she would have imagined spending her time, but nevertheless when Viv discovers Thistleburr Booksellers she also discovers that adventure and excitement comes in different shapes like a fowl-mouthed rattkin proprietor, a flour-dusted dwarven baker, and a rambunctious gnome with a penchant for knives. Who knows? Maybe the action Viv craves is not as far away as she thinks.

As is the case with any particular mood you get into with reading, it ebbs and flows. For the last couple of weeks I have been all about cosy fantasy reads that I can while away some sunlit afternoons with, but it seems this mood is now ebbing as I found Bookshops & Bonedust to just not be as cosy and enveloping as Legends & Lattes. It’s a sweet and relatable story of self-discovery and growth through finding new interests, with a slightly more dramatic, adventure-y twist in the third act.

The prose is simple, not particularly memorable, but it does transport us into the sleepy seaside town: though this could just be because we are so overexposed to this kind of setting in a plethora of genres that it’s very easy to be transported there with just a few words.

It’s interesting to read a prequel written after a book establishes the central character, mainly because we get to see a greener (no pun intended) and underdeveloped version of this character that we’ve previously come to know. In Viv’s case, she’s young, aggressive, and itching for a fight; devoid of the wisdom and appreciation for the less-stabby pleasures the world can offer. This brings a little humour to the book in the scenes where people raise their eyebrows when they see her reading a book but for the reader, it does deplete her character a little bit, which is fine for the story but meant that I found it a little harder to pick up the book again once I’d put it down.

Image credit: Fantasy-Hive

But with a supporting cast of colour characters, I’m not saying this book is devoid of appeal. Filled with action, romance, comedy, and cosy vibes, Bookshops & Bonedust is a fine little fantasy read if you have the time to while away.

Author: Travis Baldree, 2023

Published: Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, 2023.

Bookshops & Bonedust is the prequel to Legends & Lattes.

Legends & Lattes

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Continuing on with cramming cosy fantasy reads before the book for July bookclub comes through, this week I travelled to Thune where I came across an adorable little café called Legends & Lattes.

“A novel of high fantasy… and low stakes” the front cover says, perfect for a cosy afternoon read.

Viv the orc barbarian has made the decision to hang up her sword, leave the life of the adventuring mercenary, and settle down to realise a new dream: opening the first ever coffee shop in Thune. While the locals have no idea what coffee is, this is not the only problem that Viv will face on her journey. A complete lack of business experience, the city’s shady criminal underbelly, and the arrival of a nettled old teammate threaten to turn Viv’s dream into a nightmare. But with hard work and the assistance of old friends and new, she might just be able to pull it off.

Written by audiobook narrator and videogame developer, Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes is a cosy, low-stakes read for anyone who enjoys the recognisable fantasy tropes of Dungeons & Dragons and slice-of-life anime. A simple story with a sweet, heartwarming message about backing oneself, it’s a book that is transportive, immersive, and fun.

Written in a simple prose in the third-person register, Legends & Lattes takes the recognisable fantasy settings and characters of Dungeons & Dragons and brings a little modern twist to them in a way that is rather vague and hand-wavey but nevertheless completely acceptable, as the book’s laid-back and nonchalant tone does not call for any deep-seated and stoic lore. Coffee is a gnomish invention – perfectly reasonable and believable, no further questions.

Image credit: Fantasy-Hive

A motley and eclectic group of characters make up the central cast with Viv the hulking orcish barbarian turned café-owner, Tandri the reserved succubus with an artistic flair, Thimble the quiet rattkin who creates wondrous baked goods, Cal the stoic handy-hobgoblin, and Pendry the shy bard. While it’s fair to say the characters are a little two-dimensional, the overall cosy vibe of the book allows for this: there are enough generic cues that let your brain know exactly what type of book this is and how lightly or heavily you need to get emotionally invested in order to enjoy it, so the basic story, the simple characters, and the lack of drama are not problematic in the slightest.

Legends & Lattes is just a nice, cosy, fantasy read filled with tropes and triggers that allow your brain to hunker down for some smooth rundown time.

Author: Travis Baldree, 2022

Published: Tom Doherty Associates, 2022. First published in the UK by Tor and imprint of Pan Macmillan, 2022. Picture paperback edition published 2023

A Fellowship of Games & Fables

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On top of exposing me to books that I normally would not pick out for myself and unearthing other ways in which I can be interpreting the books that I read, being part of a book club has made me really appreciate the different reading experience I get when I read a book recreationally. It occurred to me recently that a lot of the books that I've consumed over the years have been as part of some sort of assignment: university, the 1001 project, and now book club. I have just closed the cover on J. P. Penner’s third instalment in the Adenashire series and, perhaps it’s been the winter weather, perhaps it’s been a stressful workweek, but the hours I was able to steal cosying up with this book that I was reading for me and no other reason have really been some of the most enjoyable.

Jez is not looking forward to the Adenashire Yule Games. She’s not a fan of the cold weather or the large crowds. She would much rather be allowed to sleep the entire Yule season away. But a drunken encounter lands her right in the middle of the festivities with a wager to beat a boastful human team. Not only that, but she must also fake a relationship with her friend Taenya, a woodland elf. Plagued by long-standing insecurities about her worth and a sense of pride that won’t let her back out of her mess, Jez tackles each Yule Game event with cold pragmatism. But the more time she spends with Taenya, the warmer her demeanour becomes. Could she be falling for the elf, and would a romance ruin a perfectly good friendship?

A Fellowship of Games & Fables is the third book in Penner’s Adenashire series: a collection of incredibly cosy fantasy reads that are best enjoyed with a cup of tea and some form of warm baked-good. Each book is a sweet little romance novel, following a trio of protagonists introduced in the very first instalment:  A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic. Book three follows Jez, an aloof and emotionally closed-off fennex and, similar to its predecessors, it chronicles a sweet and wholesome story of self-discovery and romance.

Similar to book one, in that the central drama is in the form of a competitive situation, where Games & Fables surpasses Bakers & Magic is in its solid establishment of drama. It could be that book one was Penner finding her feet with the series, but the low-stakes quickly went down to no-stakes and the thrill that should have come with a competitive setting just didn’t. This is not the case with book three. Penner works with the knowledge that readers are immediately going to side with Jez and uses that character misdirection to create a good sense of drama and suspense where the narrative requires it. It’s a fun play on the idea of the unreliable narrator, without the omniscient narrator doing any real misleading – just letting the reader do all the work based on their relationship with the character.

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Written in a prose accessible to a wide audience-range, A Fellowship of Games & Fables is a delightfully cosy read filled with drama, romance, very cute scenes of social awkwardness, and complete with recipes in the back! I have since discovered that there are yet more instalments in this series and I am quite excited to get them on my shelf.

Author: J. P. Penner, 2024,2025

Published: Poison Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Illinois, 2025