November 7, 2025 Long time no see! Added a bunch of stuff to my digital gallery. Also fixed Rowan, he shouldn’t block the buttons now.
August 1, 2024 Did a small revamp of the site - the contact page has been changed to about, and galleries have been updated to display more nicely.
July 18, 2024 Updated the site to be more mobile-friendly (so hopefully more accessible) and made the buttons a little more interesting.
Hello!
It’s been a while since I updated this site. Sorry for the radio silence.
My laptop died, I got busy finishing my dissertation, amongst other things, so this project fell by the wayside a little. Hopefully that won’t be the case in the future ;)
With that said, I’ve got some things in the works. I finally finished re-reading the stormlight archive, and finished Wind and Truth, so I’m planning on writing a review page for that.
(These are my working notes for Solan/Palani/Rochel; uploading here in time for the secret santa :])
Note these are copy-pasted from my working doc so apologies in advance for any weird/incomplete notes!
Notes on Vitalus vays Palani Palani’s generally a kind and welcoming vay. Privately she’ll probably complain to Roche about her father’s guests when they host dinners, but that’s the main exception. She’s not afraid to talk to whoever or stand up for herself/others; she’s also particularly good at making people feel welcome in groups or conversation.
Is good!
I had a similar experience with both this and Snow Crash, where it was interesting to see how the worries of the time parallel things going on today. It’s far from a light read, though, just as a warning.
I’d considered reading the sequel, but after seeing how far apart the two are written (and reviews mentioning the irrelevance to the original), I’ve decided it’s not worth it for now.
This one really gripped me! Genre-wise, it’s not something I typically go for - the “fantasy” tag is pretty loosely used here - but it was a really good example of a child’s viewpoint done well.
I’m reticent to discuss the plot too much, to avoid spoilers (go read it).
I think the horror was done really well, and contrasted with the general sense of childlike wonder with the world that the protagonist had.
S’aight.
Similarly to Ancillary Justice, The Raven Tower follows the viewpoint of a non-human character, this time a mysterious god. It’s split between two times - the present, where the Lease (a weird monarch/sacrifice position) is due to be replaced, and the past, where the god recounts its history, leading up to the present day.
Once again, I think the narration of a nonhuman character was stellar. Admittedly I’m partial to this kind of worldbuilding, where gods and beliefs have (somewhat limited) influence over the state of the world.
Hey there, it’s been a while.
I’ve been spending most of the last few months grinding away at my thesis - though I feel I’m going too slow. I’ve been trying to treat uni like a job (read: not working on it at home), but that’s not working :( I need to step up my game if I’m to be done by October. I honestly think the hardest part of postgrad is working with a lack of proper schedule… I’m interested in the work!
I was a little daunted by the length of this - around 800 pages - but it never felt a chore to get through, and I was never lost on what was going on.
The book takes place as ancient dragons are waking, signalling the end to an era of peace. Eadaz is responsible for guarding Queen Sabran from the shadows, as she is possibly the key to keeping the Nameless One, the great dragon of legend, from emerging from the sea and starting an apocalypse.
~3.5/5
This book was recommended to me by a couple of friends when I was talking about reading discworld. Unfortunately, it didn’t really grip me.
Red Dwarf mostly follows Lister, whose drinking problems have led him to being stranded on one of Saturn’s moons. In a bid to get back to earth, he joins a mining ship, whereafter hijinks ensue.
I think comedy just generally isn’t for me. The book wasn’t badly written (though some parts have not aged well), but most of the jokes were very slapstick, which isn’t something I enjoy when there’s a lack of more interesting stuff to back it up.
American Gods follows Shadow, caught up on a mission by a mysterious man named Wednesday after he gets out of prison. To avoid spoilers, I’ll leave the rest to you to find out.
I enjoyed this. While I sometimes find Neil’s protagonists somewhat distant, Shadow felt a little more “real” (if that makes sense). There were a couple of mysteries surrounding the central plot that I had a lot of fun teasing out, and the gods portrayed are all quite interesting.
(4.5/5)
I was lucky enough to find a hardcover edition of this book, and it was the first one on my bookshelf I decided to tackle here.
A Wizard of Earthsea follows the story of Ged (or Sparrowhawk as he is also known) through his childhood as he learns to be a wizard. As far as story goes, it’s not an incredibly complex one, but it’s very well put together. At the time of its publishing, such stories weren’t nearly as common as they are now, as LeGuin mentions in the afterword of this book.
Some stuff that I’ve been doing that I thought might be interesting to talk about. This is the first update! Site updates in general might be slow for a while since my uni’s starting again soon - I’ll do my best to update reviews, at the very least.
Reading I finished System Collapse earlier this month. I already have a review for the rest of The Murderbot Diaries, so I’ll be adding an update there.
Set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch trilogy, this book follows Ingray, a young woman from the Hwean system. When a purchase goes wrong, she has to juggle with her politics and family to prevent disaster.
After the original trilogy, it was nice to see what the Radchaai look like from outside of their domain. It also contrasted nicely with Breq’s perspective from the previous books - the conflict is a smaller scale, and though Hwae is seemingly unrelated to the goings-on of the Radchaai, I still found myself invested in Ingray’s struggle by the end.
Ancillary Justice
The first in a loose trilogy, Breq is the lone remaining body of a ship’s AI following a disaster not specified - what we know is she’s angry, and she’s seeking someone.
I found Breq’s perspective interesting; the use of a single pronoun in a society where gender isn’t baked into the language was fresh to read, and executed fairly cleanly. I’m sure essays could (and probably have) be written on that alone, but what I found far more intriguing was the perspective of a hive-mind AI.
The Eternal Sky trilogy follows the journey of Re Temur, as he seeks to reclaim his grandfather’s throne. Along with Temur, the series follows a number of other character perspectives.
As with the sequel series, Bear does a brilliant job of handling this; despite the large cast of characters most of them feel well fleshed out and interesting. These novels felt quite dense at times though - though I never struggled to get through them, they each took a long time to finish.
Overall, I enjoyed this series, with some major caveats.
Miles is a very fun character to follow, and these books hold up well. The early books are (mostly) very fun, and I found most of them no challenge to get through.
My main problem was with the latter half of the series. As with most of Bujold’s books, there’s a tendency for characters to get happily traditionally married by the end of the series.
I’ll admit, I’m biased towards Monette’s writing. I read Melusine a lot back in highschool, and it was a keystone in forming my tastes.
I enjoyed the mystery of this book. Kyle Murchison Booth is always fun to read, and Monette is very good at what she does. I only wish it was a little longer, as the ending felt quite abrupt.
I enjoyed these books, and it’s always fun to see a NZ author. All the characters are interesting and each of the books have a central mystery that is both intriguing to find out and devastating at the conclusion.
Unfortunately, something about the writing stopped me from clicking with the characters.
Books 1-6
The Murderbot Diaries is a series of novels and novellas following Murderbot, a sentient bot who has hacked its governor chip.
I loved this series. Most of the novellas are relatively short, and easy reading. Despite that, each one manages a good amount of depth in terms of character, and Murderbot’s point of view is distinctive and fun to read.
System Collapse
(3.5/5)
On the whole, I enjoyed this.
Overview [1869] is a relatively friendly esk, although they carry an air of loneliness wherever they go. Drowned at sea, they are constantly wandering along the edges of their boundary, looking for their owners from their past life. Finding nothing, they take comfort in swimming with the fauna that make their homes in the ruins.
Origin [Prompts incomplete - check back later!]
Hi there! I’m Rhenn, an artist/student/local creature based in NZ.
My main hobbies at the moment are digital art and snowsports - though I also do a lot of reading, and various kinds of programming. Good at starting projects, not so great at finishing them X(
Contact Got questions or comments about the website? Want to talk about anything in general? Feel free to email me.
I also check my neocities profile and the melonland forum periodically, so you can contact me there if you’d like.
Witch King follows the story of the demon Kai, who awakens after being killed, and his journey to find out what happened.
I wanted to enjoy Witch King more than I did. I loved Kai as a protagonist, and Wells’ writing was enjoyable, but it suffered from the split timeline.
Witch King has two timelines - one set in the present, and one in the past. Both were very interesting, but I felt like not enough time was spent on either, leaving us with two half-stories.