Painted Devils

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After the epic tome that was Don Quixote, I felt that I deserved to dive back into some mindless YA fantasy: my guilty pleasure. A few months ago, I discovered that Little Thieves by Margaret Owen was the first book in a trilogy, so I promptly picked up copies of the other two books and reread Little Thieves to reacquaint myself with the world and characters. It’s a joy to be back in the cold, Scandinavian setting with Vanja trying to navigate her way through encounters with nachtmaren, Low Gods, and maleficent spectres.

After leaving Minkja to start a life a little more on the straight and narrow, Vanja stumbles drunkenly to the small village of Hagendorn one night, accidently spilling her rubies into the river as she does. Rather than risk the frostbite of fishing alone, she scams the town into helping her retrieve them, inventing a goddess called the Scarlet Maiden and a promise to bless the town should they find all the rubies. When minor miracles of good fortune start to happen, a cult springs up for the Scarlet Maiden and the lie then spins out of control when Emeric appears to investigate the anomaly and Vanja’s fake goddess manifests and claims him as a sacrifice. Vanja, now accused of profane fraud, finds herself in another dangerous race against time to save Emeric, prove her innocence, and learn the truth of the Scarlet Maiden.

With the characters, setting, and lore established in Little Thieves, Painted Devils focuses on furthering the character and relationship development of the two romantic leads: Vanja and Emeric. Owen’s sassy and modern prose complete with snide asides that are almost metafictive but not quite, is still going strong in this book. Unlike its predecessor, I found this one to be a little bit of a slow starter, a gas stove on the fritz that is click-click-clicking with sparks before (finally) bursting into blue flame.

The central story is no less thrilling than the first one once it gets going. In fact, there actually proves to be a lot more in this one than just ‘break curse and bring evil prince to justice’. The to-do list of quests that make up Painted Devils is impressive: save Emeric, prove Vanja’s innocence, find alternate means to appease goddess, steal a sacred relic, find missing persons, expose a town-wide business scam, solve the mystery of the Scarlet Maiden… it goes on.

Image credit: Bookrelease.com

Vanja and Emeric’s relationship definitely develops, still being reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. One thing that I did find myself hitching on was the introduction of sex. To be fair, sex is kind of integral to the story and the character development of both Vanja and Emeric and there are a couple of amusing scenes in which Owen very succinctly depicts the awkwardness that adolescents encounter when they are required to talk about sex. She also highlights a prominent point in her heroes’ obliviousness about sex and sexuality: sexual education during adolescence is ludicrously poor. It’s astounding that in such a modern age, open discussions about one of the most natural things that humans do productively and recreationally are still considered dirty and taboo. This was the little slice of hidden social commentary that I got out of this; you can always find them in fantasy.

Filled with action, adventure, drama, romance, and sex, Painted Devils is a fun and rollicking follow-up to Little Thieves that ticks all the boxes for a good, comfy, YA fantasy.

Author: Margeret Owen, 2023

Published: Hodderscape, Hodderscape & Stoughton, Hachette, Great Britain, 2023. Paperback edition published 2024.

Don Quixote

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There are all kinds of answers to the question ‘why do we read?’. For some, it’s the voyeurism and escape from the everyday that entices them to turn pages. For others, it’s the broadening of literary, cultural, social, or even vocabulary horizons. There are some who like the challenges that reading can pose and thus, the thrill of overcoming those challenges when you close the cover on the book now read. For myself, it’s all of these things, but in regard to the latest book that I have closed the cover on, it is certainly the latter.

After a couple of months, I have finished reading Don Quixote.

This classic Spanish work from the 1600s chronicles the humorous and bizarre tale of Senor Don Quixote who develops a madness after reading too many novels about knights and chivalry that he believes them to be histories and determines to re-establish the golden age of knights errant in modern Spain. With armour made from a pasteboard, a noble steed (actually a broken-down old nag) and a loyal squire (a simple-minded neighbour), he leaves his village in search of adventures in which he can right wrongs, save damsels, and raise his good name of Don Quixote, Knight of the Sorrowful Face, into the famed realms of those good knights he has read about.

Miguel de Cervantes is credited with inventing the form of the novel by first creating the role of the reader in literature. The book’s prologue begins with addresses to the ‘idle reader’, the hero’s trials and quests are determined by his understanding of the narrative form of such stories, having read an abundance of them, and in the second instalment of his adventures, it is made clear that the inhabitants of Spain have read about his adventures and misadventures, indeed making him a famous knight errant – though not for the reasons he wishes.

Despite its date tag of the 1600s, Don Quixote is really a thoroughly modern book. It’s the first example of a number of meta techniques that other famous authors would go on to use. First, we have the idea of the fictional history, Cervantes constantly refers to the work as a history chronicled by someone else, establishing the bizarre Don Quixote as a real person rather than a fictional character. This heightens the humour in the second instalment of the knight’s adventures as characters recognise Don Quixote, having read the first published chronicle of his trials and deeds, thus mirroring the reader's own experience.

Second, we have a constant underlying current of social commentary focusing on society’s relationship with literature as well open discussions about the nature of literature as well as its makeup. There are many scenes in which Don Quixote confuses characters by speaking about literature so eloquently that he causes them to forget that he is indeed mad.

Finally, we have the constant references and addresses to the reader. Cervantes consistently reminds us that these chronicles were written down by another and brings us out of the voyeuristic riptide of the book by referring to the thoughts of the author on the hero’s misadventures, as well as commenting on or drawing attention to details that have been omitted or summarised for the sake of the novel.

Despite there being many layers to process and pass through on an academic or critical-thinking level, the book also offers its readers a delightfully chaotic and humorous voyage of action, drama, suspense, romance, and fantasy. Through Don Quixote’s misadventures, we get to enjoy stories within stories such as the great romance of Cardenio and Luscinda, and the tragic tale of curious Anselmo, as well as the humorous tricks of the duke and duchess who seek to play on Don Quixote’s madness for further entertainment.

Image credit: Britannica

While absolutely a challenge, the story/stories of Don Quixote are true classics filled with action, adventure, romance, chivalry, and comedy. They have inspired novellas and plays, continue to be referenced and adapted, and have been canonised in literary history as the birth of the novel and the reader.

Author: Miguel de Cervantes

Published: Juan de la Cuesta, Madrid, 1605-1615. Pictured edition published by Vintage, Random House, London, 2005.

Translation: Edith Grossman

The Transformations

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What better way to ring in the new year, then by closing the cover on a book? I had hoped to make this month’s bookclub read the last one of 2025, but it’s been a year and I threw in the towel at 11pm when my eyes and brain could not take in any more words.

2025 was a year in which a lot of things changed for me, there were a lot of upheavals, adjustments, and reshufflings. It’s kind of eerily apt that the final book I consumed this year was The Transformations by Andrew Pippos.

The story follows George Desoulis, a subeditor at The National and a functional loner by nature. His contented bubble of solitary routine is shaken up one night when he allows Cassandra Gwan, a self-assured journalist and coworker to enter it. Soon the two begin an unorthodox relationship, each becoming increasingly aware of the intimate ways in which they are transforming from one person to another, as they respond to the changing landscape of their jobs, their responsibilities to family, and the events of their past that still live in the dark corners of their characters.

I like to think of myself as an open reader, an eclectic in that I enjoy a variety of genres, writing styles, and author timbres. If I have learned anything about myself while reading this book, it is that I respond better to books that are not quite so calm and subtle. It’s a bit of a cliché, but this girl likes a bit of drama!

The Transformations is a book that explores the intricacies of emotional human development and how we are constantly morphing from one identity to another, creating a human-shaped papier mache of labels that bears a name. Pippos as an omniscient third-person narrator follows his romantic leads in equal measure as well as the supporting characters, giving readers a rich understanding of who these people are and what types of events and experiences have shaped them.

The prose is blunt with the odd adjective or adverb breathing life and personality into the scene. It’s a book in which the real stories are told between the lines, through subtle hints in dialogue or a throwaway sentence of self-analysing exposition. The problem that I encountered with this is that, while it made the book easy to read, I felt that the characters and the events that were taking place lacked personality, vibrance, and drama and thus, it was a bit hard to really become enveloped in the world of the book. I enjoyed reading it for reading’s sake, admiring the author’s literary craft rather than the story or characters he had created.

Image credit: Writing NSW

While I don’t believe that this is a book that I would revisit, I am pleased to have read it, taken a few life perspectives away from it, and been exposed to a new author who has a talent for conveying and traversing the finnicky emotional labyrinths of the human condition. The Transformations is a book that very simply explores the changing nature of relationships and boundaries of relationships, the decline of the newspaper as an institution, and the various ways in which change happens, sometimes suddenly sometimes unnoticed over time.

Author: Andrew Pippos, 2025

Published: Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd, 2025.

The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a triple murder trial

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

Stories are everywhere and, whether we truly realise it or not, they make up who we are and how we navigate the world. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and we seek to absorb more and more stories over the course of our lives to have goals to works towards, add sweetness and spice to our existences, and fill the free moments when we don’t have to be ‘on’.

One story that has caught the majority of Australia in a paralysis grip in the last year has been that of Erin Patterson, a stay-at-home mum who invited her ex-husband’s devoutly Christian family to a special lunch, from which three of the four attendees died from poisoning from death cap mushrooms. Of course I was aware, but did not follow the story myself – true crime is not particularly something that I am drawn to – but for many Australians the court trial of Patterson was the hot topic for conversation, discussion, analysis, and dissection.

The Mushroom Tapes is a collaborative work of non-fiction from Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, and Sarah Krasnostein – a narrative transcript of their various conversations they have with each other over the course of the trial.

This is a true-crime analysis like no other. These three intelligent and inquisitive women do not only discuss the trial proceedings, the characters in the courtroom, and the motives/meaning behind the crime. The book is also a unique exploration into the country’s collective obsession with Patterson’s crime. Absolutely everything from marital disappointment, to the female fascination with true crime, to intimacies of the kitchen, to the tendency to make retro dishes for special occasions is put under the microscope and poked and prodded to see just how many ways they can be reshaped.

The read itself is very easy and digestible. Being transcripts of their recorded conversations in the car as they drive to the trial, in the hotel room after court, on the phone when other commitments kept them separated, the book reads as intelligent and artistic banter between friends; like one might have around the lunch table. Simple, narrative descriptions of the people and places they visit over the course of the trial help to build the world and add the visual element that draws us into the voyeuristic world of the book, and like any conversations the tone swivels and swerves between the curious, the sympathetic, dramatic, humorous, morbid, and melancholy.

Image credit: Text Publishing

While I’m not sure if this is a book that I would read again, it was different and certainly fascinating to hear down-to-earth voices talking about the bigger picture that sits in the background of a courtroom drama.

Author: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, & Sarah Krasnostein, 2025

Published: The Text Publishing Company, Victoria, 2025

What We Can Know

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Like actors, writers can be versatile and traverse the multiverse of genre and form but at the same time they are people with strengthened talents in specific areas. While some actors are usually cast as the girl next door, or the leading man of action, authors are the same with some banking on their ability to create thrilling suspense as others primarily work within the confines of the quest narrative.

Ian McEwan is an author who specialises in dissecting and magnifying the human complexities of his characters, which I think is what makes his books compelling, popular, and perfect for film adaptations. Having only read two of his novels previously I can’t call myself a fan, but I can appreciate his craft and admire his talent for creating compelling and confronting character-driven narratives. I have just closed the cover on his latest book, What We Can Know, and while I don’t think it is a book for me, I certainly was intrigued by it.

Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, spends his adult life poring over the archives of early 21^st century literature, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life in, what he deems, the Golden Age. His prime obsession: a legendary poem by Francis Blundy read aloud during a dinner party in 2014, never published and never heard from again. Over the years the poem has become a great myth and symbol of what has been lost, but when Tom discovers a clue that may lead to the poem’s resurrection, hope of finding this lost masterpiece is kindled. However, the clue takes Tom on a journey of terrible discoveries about a world and people he thought he knew so intimately.

What We Can Know primarily explores the idea, as well as the dangers, of ‘Golden Age thinking’ mixed with that adage of ‘you should never meet your heroes’. Set in a future where the physical world has taken on new shapes thanks to climate change, war, and other human-related follies, it is divided into two parts told by separate narrators. Part One is narrated by Tom Metcalfe and it chronicles both the research and journey to find the lost poem, with the famous ‘Second Immortal Dinner’ pieced together from journal entries and emails, as well as the intimate relationship that Tom has with Francis Blundy, his wife Vivien, and the other figures of his research. Part Two takes us back in time with an intimate journal entry from Vivien Blundy that tells the true story of that dinner, the poem, and what it meant.

McEwan is one of the most intimate writers that I have come across. While events that are dramatic by nature do appear in his novels, they are made more traumatic by their being character-driven and then internally analysed by those characters. The physical events are nothing compared to the emotional scrutiny and dissection that they are subjected to afterwards. What We Can Know chronicles epic journeys of self-analysis, emotional paralysis, metamorphosis, and destruction. Written plainly but with enough adverbs and adjectives that do an impressive amount of heavy lifting, it’s an ingeniously deceptive story that looks romantic, poetic, and exciting on the surface but is dark, confronting, and nightmarish underneath. An olive in a dish of chocolate-coated almonds, a seasoned doughnut where tyrannical cinnamon has overthrown the sugar.

Image credit: Wikipedia

It's complex, intensely voyeuristic, confronting, and rather difficult to talk about, as it is so provocative and churns up such a tsunami of thoughts that it’s impossible to sort through the wreckage. Fans of McEwan will be delighted, and dabblers will find an appreciation for the insane talent he has for putting the turbulent and terrible nature of humans into words.

Author: Ian McEwan, 2025

Published: Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage; Penguin Random House UK, 2025

Arborescence

Image credit: Hachette Australia

A reading experience can be many things. It can be immersive, disruptive, comforting, harrowing, scary, exhilarating, it can be anything and everything all at once sometimes. While we are tempted to measure the brilliance of a book by how positive we find the reading experience that it provides, that’s not always the best way to go about it. Sometimes we need to consider that the books that disturb and unsettle us are just as brilliant as the ones that excite and uplift us. Having been late on the last book for bookclub, this week I have gone to the other extreme and finished the book with almost a month to spare! It’s a cliché to gush that the brilliant thing about bookclubs is that they encourage you to read books that you ordinarily wouldn’t, but it’s one hundred per cent the case. A complete departure from the hilarious detective-noir farce that was The Empress Murders, this week’s read had me skeptical, curious, enthralled, unsettled, and dispirited. This week I’m talking about Rhett Davis’ Arborescence.

Bren works for a company that he doesn’t understand the point of with colleagues whom he has never met. His partner Caelyn cycles through jobs looking for something, though she’s not sure what. One day the couple discover a group of people in a nearby forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough, they will eventually take root and become trees. While Bren dismisses the idea as a weird cult ideology, Caelyn becomes fascinated by it. She goes back to university and writes articles about it and soon the two realise that the idea is spreading. People are going missing and trees are appearing in places where they weren’t before. Could arborescence really be true? As the world becomes greener and cities and technology stagger, Caelyn sees nothing to fear but Bren is not so sure.

Arborescence begins as a wholesome, almost hippy-dippy exploration about the bizarre and dysfunctional love triangle that is the human-technology-nature relationship. It then begins to slowly and eerily turn towards the avenue of thriller territory before suddenly taking a hard turn into the realm of dystopia. It’s a hugely provocative book, inspiring an absolute tirade of thought processes regarding the state of the world, the toxicity of humanity, what the human condition truly means and how it affects everything it around it, as well as social, economical, and natural evolution.

Davis writes in a structurally fragmented way to depict the erraticism of human thought processes while at the same time using prose that is rich, poetic, slow-moving, and even soothing. The disjointed paragraphs mixed with this soothing, measured language has an unsettling effect as it both startles and lulls the reader, diverting their attention away from the creeping doom that inches ever closer. This way, when the horror of the story does finally settle in, it’s truly upsetting enough to inspire stomach drops, gooseflesh, and shivers.

While I spent a fair potion of this book being captivated and then horrified, the remainder was spent feeling depressed as Davis really writes about two dystopias, one replacing the other. When the book starts in what I assume is the modern day, AI or ‘alternative intelligences’ are prevalent, running entire companies, issuing orders and workloads, and even hiring human actors as representatives when face-to-face interviews are required. It’s eerily science fiction without really being in that hyper-futuristic setting and the interactions between human and technology are so nonchalantly depicted that the strangeness of it doesn’t quite register until you realise that the ‘boss’ sitting across from Bren in the café is actually a man working for a robot. This technological dystopia that the book begins in establishes the shift in human relationships with one another, showing a lack of vibrance, energy, or spark. Perhaps I interpreted this on a more personal level as I’ve recently had to adjust to working remotely with all colleagues being online: isolation can really be a downer. By the time the natural dystopia takes root, Davis has raised so many questions about the changing flavour of human relationships that it’s hard to find the will to stand up.

Image credit: Curtis Brown

I think if I read this book again, it will be some years down the track, but I do think that it was brilliant! There is so much going on and being explored narratively, structurally, and socially. It really makes the mind whirl with theories, questions, anxieties, and hope. And while I haven’t come away from a read so depressed since The Great Gatsby, Davis does leave readers on a hopeful note. It’s certainly not a comfy, cosy read, but I think I would recommend Arborescence if you’re out for a challenge, a stimulant, or an emotional shakeup.

Author: Rhett Davis, 2025

Published: Hachette Australia, 2025

The Empress Murders

Image credit: Allen & Unwin

So it’s early days of having joined a real book club – I attended my second meeting this week- and I have already become that person who totally mistook the date and ended up in the position of having one day to read the book! Thankfully, our book this month – The Empress Murders- is such a fast-paced and engaging read that I was able to get through to thirds of it before the meeting!

Aboard the Empress of Australia, a plethora of passengers are crossing the Atlantic and heading for New York. It is smooth sailing until a dead body is discovered. It quickly falls to house detective Archie Daniels to find the killer but as soon he begins, it escalates into a case of solving not just one murder, but two, and then three, and then more. Suddenly Daniels is on the trail of a serial killer and no passenger, from the wealthy 1^st classers to the societal dregs below deck, is safe from being either victim or villain. 

Beginning life as a play, The Empress Murders is the debut novel from actor and writer Toby Schmitz and it’s a book that promptly catapults you into its world and mirrors the plights of the characters in that it keeps you hostage. While I had other reasons for wanting to read through it as fast as possible, the fragmented prose, compelling take on the genre, and delightfully despicable characters really aid you in absolutely powering through its pages.

The events are uniquely chronicled with the ship (or the idea of the ship) as the narrator, an omniscient being that still has a direct connection to the unfolding events. While Daniels’ hunt for the serial killer is undoubtedly the main story, the book is fleshed out with wispy side hustles featuring a revolving cast of select characters: all of them pretty pitiful. The fragmented style in which Schmitz chooses to tell the story not only gives the book its machine-gun pace but also makes it read in a more visual manner with events being crafted to read more like a script or screenplay. On top of this novelty, the book is also a farcical take on the detective-noir genre. There are definitely vibes of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, while at the same time the language and character dialogue is spliced and very modern. We then have increasing levels of ridiculousness that manifest in the form of the murders – these paragraphs are not for the squeamish. I personally found the thick and bloody layers of gore added to the nonsensical farce of the narrative, but they can seem gratuitous and not really adding anything to the story – how you interpret it depends on the type of reader you are.

Image credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Despite the very serious and gruesome events that unfold, I found The Empress Murders to be an extravagant and often hilarious farce, a bit like The Master and Margarita. It’s filled with action, characters that you love to hate, intriguing little histories that you want to find out more about, and plenty of drama. There is certainly a lot packed into it and the machine-gun pace does make the reading experience akin to staring out the window of a speeding train. I’m certain there are things that I missed, no doubt a revisit is warranted.

Author: Toby Schmitz, 2025

Published: Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2025