Thank you to Del Rey and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

3.5 stars rounded down. The fact that this book features a baby pterodactyl and he's not even a core part of the story is SICK.

I struggled a bit with this one. I loved the idea of this book and after eagerly anticipating it for months and months, I was so excited when I got approved for the arc. Unfortunately, while I think the premise of this book is good, it failed to deliver on what I expected from this book. Maybe that's my fault, as I read the summary and expected cosy fantasy with dinosaurs and some magic. Seeing this book be comped to Emily Wilde reinforced my expectations too!

This was very much an up and down read for me. The setting is supposed to be Victorian London, and while reading this I did not get the impression that this was set in the Victorian era at all. I decided to ignore this as I guess if magic exists in Victorian London then things would be different. There's also a lot of discussion around faith and religion in this book which I was not expecting at all. I went in for the dinosaurs and instead got repetitive stories about the great flood and so on. Which is fine, I think, but the way it kept getting dragged out got annoying.

I liked Mary at the start, but I found her to be too passive at times. She is determined and competent but I also found her to be incredible self-centred. She changed as a character towards the end and not for the better. In the beginning, she is shown as treating the fossils with respect. She cared for what she found. Towards the end, she became almost flippant and careless about them.

I also don't know why the summary describes her as solving a mystery, because every piece of information she gets and the answers to the mystery are handed to her by a male character. I also did not like Henry. I just thought his actions did not line up with what he was saying and quite frankly he hid far too much from Mary.

The ending was rushed and very sudden and almost cartoonish.

Honestly I think I'm most annoyed by the fact that Ajax wasn't even a core part of the story.

I will not be providing a full review as this has now been pulled from publication but I did have a good time with this book and found it fun.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

This is a DNF at 30%.

I was really excited for this because I love sci-fi and it was compared to Gideon the Ninth and the tagline was sapphic moby dick in space. Perfect! Unfortunately, I struggled massively with this book.

I did not like the main character at all. I think this type of main character has been done to death. She's like a manic pixie dream girl but for sapphics, which would be absolutely fine if she had any other personality other than sex and being quirky. I was exhausted trying to follow her narration.

The book is incredibly slow. If I'm 24/25 chapters in I expect SOMETHING to have happened. Instead it's just infodump after infodump with the narrator getting railed every few chapters by random women. Which I would've loved and been fine with except there's no character development, no moving forward in the plot etc.

One of the characters only speaks Latin. It makes sense for her character and where she came from, but it was exhausting to read her scenes. Even when I understood what she was saying, I genuinely don't understand why I had to work so hard to read her scenes when I didn't care about the character. The character was clearly important to the narrator but the lack of development meant that I felt like I had to work to read her scenes, and again, it was just exhausting.

I think exhausting is a good overall description of this book. The narration style has been done to death and instead of enjoying this it felt like I was trapped in a conversation with someone who looooved the sound of their own voice. I really liked the worldbuilding from the first few chapters, with the religions and different cultures being mentioned, but it quickly devolved and became more focused on immature humour and sex.

If you plan to pick this book up because it's being described as gideon the ninth meets murderbot, then don't. It's not like either of those things.

Thank you to Canelo and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year!

4.25 stars for me.

I did sneakily bump this one to the top of my TBR (sshhh!) because I've been desperate to read it ever since I read that it was a fantasy retelling of the English conquest of Wales. I am not Welsh, but I recognised a lot of the similar sounding words, a lot of the folklore and legends, and I can tell the author did their research for this book.

The book follows Meilyr, who runs an apothecary and hides his forbidden magical nature, as he enters into an arranged marriage with the prince of the invading force, Osian, in order to save his brother. Meilyr has to attend court and hide his true nature, and then people start dying very magic-related deaths.

This is the slowest of slow burns. Don't go into this thinking that things are moving fast, because they aren't! There is a lot of yearning and pining, but it absolutely makes sense for the story for this to be slow burn, and it's delicious!

The nature-based magic was fascinating and unique, the court scenes and politics were excellent, and I loved loved loved the character dynamics at play here. Meilyr is at court, surrounded by people whose ancestors have opppressed his people, and trying to avoid their suspicion. I've seen some people say that Meilyr is too passive or too anxious or unwilling to do anything. I think his actions make perfect sense for his character. He is deeply afraid, trapped at court, every eye watching his move, and if he puts even a toe out of line, it might mean the death of his brother and his people.

The relationship between Meilyr and Osian is slow burn, filled with yearning and quiet resistance. Osian is rebelling against his family, and he is fiercely protective of Meilyr without coming across as smothering. It's very sweet and I genuinely loved their scenes together.

The author also played around with linguistics here - the oppressing force have one name for something, but Meilyr's people call it by it's true name. This can be a location, a castle, plant etc. It's so clever and so true to real life and I really liked how the author handled it here.

The ending made me gasp and now I am desperate for the next book!

I highly recommend picking this up if you are a fan of queer fantasy, romance filled with slow burn and yearning, court politics, murder mystery, and Welsh-inspired folklore.

Thank you to Pan MacMillan and NetGalley for the allowing me to read this ARC.

Wow.

WOW.

This is my first five star read of 2026. What a book.

This book is written as a memoir from a man who willingly shares his body with a demon. He is immortal and has lived a very long time. In this memoir of his, he is telling the tale of the Red Winter, the story of him and Antoine, and their hunt for the Beast.

The worldbuilding and magic system in this book was incredible. I enjoyed every part of it. Sarmodel may be one of my favourite parts of the book (iykyk) and I was fascinated from the first page. The characters felt so real and messy, and I genuinely could not put this book down because I wanted to keep following our characters. The dynamics between all of them is what made this book for me, esepcially between Sebastian and Samordel.

And the prose! Not a single word here is wasted. Every single word feels deliberate. There were a few alternating timelines in this book and yet it doesn't feel like the plot was messy or anything. I came away from this book without feeling like one alternaating timeline POV in this book was missing something, which I feel is rare with these sort of books. Each alternating timeline was so tightly plotted and so well written that I genuinely feel satisfied with them.

This book delivered on my expectations and then some. This is such an incredible debut, and I hope Sullivan writes more books featuring Sebastian's adventures, because I would eat up every single one.

I want to say so much more about this book but I think it's best for readers to pick this up and immerse themselves in this book because I don't know if my words can do this book justice.

Thank you to the author for allowing me to read an ARC copy of this book!

I love books with themes of breaking free of religious oppression, so I was very excited to dive in to this. I was also really enjoyed the idea of a woman being the bodyguard protecting the prince rather than it being the other way around. That’s why I signed up to receive an ARC.

A few good points first:

• the writing is good and polished
• I loved the description of magic
• the side characters were great, and developed enough that I didn’t feel confused trying to keep track of them.

However, I was frustrated by this book quite a bit. I didn’t really feel any sort of connection to the main characters for a big part of the book, but that only changed around the 70-80% mark when I started to get very invested. I liked our character before then of course but I felt like something was missing and I think it was stakes. The higher stakes of the last part of the book forced the characters to interact more and talk more and I vastly preferred that.

There are a lot of unanswered questions at the end of the book which I know will be answered in the next book. I do recommend picking this book up if you also like books featuring breaking free from religious oppression and finding love while doing that.

Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

The way this story is set up is very good. This isn't a humanity that's been in space for hundreds of years and has all the fancy space travel tech. This is humanity's baby steps into exploring the new frontier. It's a great idea and I really liked the concept and the explanation of how that came to be.

The characters were fun, and I didn't feel lost keeping track of them. I loved Jitterbug, the spaceship, who even has her own POV chapters so it really does feel like the spaceship is part of the story. The action was fast-paced and fun, and there were some moments where I didn't know where it was going to end up. I really liked the big moments at the ending, and I really liked how the story wrapped up, even though I did find it a tiny bit rushed for my taste.

The only thing knocking this book down slightly for me is the teeny tiny romance subplot. I can't even call it a subplot to be honest, as it's a minor part of the story. But this is an sci-fi action book, which means the plot moves FAST, and sometimes it feels as though the characters don't develop enough. In this case, there is a very minor romance subplot that goes from 0-100 in the blink of an eye, with no tension or hints. I suppose it makes sense, but I really would've preferred just a little more development in this.

If you like sci-fi books, you will enjoy this. If you like fast paced action in space, space battles, sentient ships, and a great crew, you will REALLY enjoy this.