Daughters of Doubt and Eyerolling

Month: November 2021

Battle of Gibberish

Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore, publishing date 11 January 2022.

The title and cover made me request this book. Look at it, doesn’t it make you think Space Opera with magic and a pinch of language science?

The combination of magic, video games and linguistics, sounded so up my alley that I was really excited when I was approved for an ARC.

Sadly, this was not the book I had hoped it would be. It read like fan-fiction; and I don’t mean the good kind.

I could not connect with the MC. Isobel is the stereotypical gamer: recluse, full of herself, too snarky, but also too gullible.

The linguistics behind the spell casting within the game, although explained, made no sense to me. Power morphemes – so basically “shout gibberish” and you can cast a spell? Add alien punctuation marks and I am constantly thinking WTF?! Maybe I am too much of a linguist and overthinking this?

Here’s what else jarred

  • The slang and pop-culture references felt out-dated, by at least a decade.
  • Every character introduced themselves by stating their name, race and pronouns; “Hello, I’m …. I’m white. My pronouns are she/her.”
  • A male author writing a lesbian (possibly bi) MC.
  • Insta-Love

1/5 Harpy Eagles

It’s that time of the month…

… when lots of my friends are trying to make time for NaNoWriMo.

I’m sorry this post is a little late, I feel swamped and hard pressed for writing time and I am not even doing NaNoWriMo this year.

As always, I have read a lot in October. I’m still on a Jodi Taylor spree. That means I managed to read the second book in her Elizabeth Cage series, as well as the latest Time Police novels; a spin-off of the Chronicles of St Mary’s series. I also read the second book in Sanderson’s Skyward Flight series [RTC]. Furthermore, I went on a Kerri Maniscalco roll mid-October, see my quick reviews here.

November, as I mentioned above, seems to have started with a lot of pressure on my free time. You know, the usual stuff before the year is out; appointments, Christmas shopping, not looking at the bank statement, etc. Yet, at the end of the month I’m going on a teensy-tiny reading retreat. I’m meeting a few friends at Gladstone’s Library in Wales for a weekend of reading, talking books and drinking tea. Okay, we might eat some cake, too.

Something to look forward to. And to plan a TBR for. At this moment I can only think of my Autumn TBR to take, which means the electronic part of my TBR, since I am not going to schlepp around physical copies of books. I couldn’t go on a shopping spree with a backpack full of books. Hand luggage regulations, you know.

Books of the Month

Because I have gotten extremely bad at writing reviews, I’ll try something different and do a bunch of shorter ones to sum up my reading month.


Race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen

Sadly, I only read an abbreviated German translation. But nonetheless, this was very interesting. Especially since I visited the Fram museum in Oslo two years ago, so I stood aboard the polar ship Amundsen used to reach the South Pole. Amundsen’s writing is captivating, and everything he and his team experienced just amazed me. A minor content warning here: don’t get attached to the dogs.

4 / 5 Magpies


The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman

This was really just a lot of fun, especially if you are into “real” mountaineering books. With the aim to put someone on the top of the titular Rum Doodle, our main character Binder puts together an expedition team. From the constantly ill Dr. Prone to the navigator Jungle who even gets lost on his way to the first planning meeting in Britain, all characters are perfectly named and just ridiculous. Together with 3000 porters (yes, the number is correct), they set out and everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The audiobook was fantastic as a palate cleanser. And just for your information, according to experts champagne can now be considered medicine. You’re welcome.

4 / 5 Magpies


Medea by Christa Wolf

It feels like lately we’ve been spoiled with retellings of Greek myths. And while most of you probably heard of the Madeline Miller books, few will know about Christa Wolf. Published in 1996, Medea tells the titular character’s story from multiple perspectives, shining a different light on the story with each new monologue. It’s quite literary but still fascinating that way, and her take on Kassandra’s story is already waiting on my shelves.

4 / 5 Magpies


The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

Ever wondered what it’s like to own a bookstore? A peek into Shaun Bythell’s diary will give you a good idea. The underlying tone is that customers are mostly quite annoying, and Amazon is out to get us all. I think there is some truth in both points. The writing is entertaining, and it worked really well as a bedside book because reading more than a couple of entries in a row might get repetitive.

3 / 5 Magpies for solid entertainment without any surprises


The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex by Tamysn Muir

This is a short story set in the Sixth House of Tamysn Muir’s Locked Tomb series. You can read it for free here. Having read both Gideon and Harrow the Ninth, it was fun to be back in the world and also to have a glimpse into the Sixth house. But without prior knowledge from the two full-length novels, this must be an extremely confusing story. And yes, you are most welcome to snicker at the name of the doctor, as are our two 13-year-old protagonists Palamedes and Camilla.

4 / 5 Magpies


The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed

This dystopian novella started off with a Chosen One storyline, but didn’t go there all the way. Instead we spend our time with the main character (and her fungi parasite) as she ponders whether or not to leave her mother behind to make something out of her life. She reaches a decision in the end, but somehow all this buildup feels anticlimactic as this is the point where the story stops. Maybe this would have worked better for me if it was instalment 0.5 of a series instead of a standalone.

3 / 5 Magpies for fungi fun


Finders Keepers by Stephen King

After reading If It Bleeds and The Outsider, I decided to finally finish the Bill Hodges trilogy. Or at least pick up book two, for now. It was a solid King novel – some blood, some suspense, greate characters. According to Goodreads, I read the first book in 2017, so I was really glad that it didn’t matter too much. Or at least I remembered enough to get along.

4 / 5 Magpies


Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels by Lavie Tidhar

This is the second of the Judge Dee short stories, it can be read for free here. Apparently there is a third one out already, so I’ll have to get to that soon. Because it’s a short story, I’m not going to tell you much about it. You’ll just have to trust me that it’s worth your time.

5 / 5 Magpies

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