Category: Review (Page 3 of 133)

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Stefan Advani is on a boat heading towards an island. He has been banished from the city of Shadrapar, the last of all cities on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. The island is a place where criminals are sent. His crime is agitation, subversion, and attempting to pervert the course of justice. It is a brutal place and almost no one leaves there alive…

It is bleak there. The prison is organic and is in the middle of a swamp. It is somehow kept afloat by ancient pumps that are somehow kept going by an equally ancient engineer. As well as surviving the sadistic prison warders, he has to kowtow to the prison hierarchy which is equally brutal. He doesn’t think he is going to last a week in this hellhole.

The second part of the book takes us back to the city of Shadrapar and is about the events that led up to his incarceration. He has come from a moderately privileged position, though not the upper echelons of the society there. He and some friends decide to write and publish a book. They print 50 copies of it, and no one shows any interest in it at all. Until one day they authorities decide that the book is actually very dangerous as it threatens their status quo, and if there is one thing that the people in power don’t like, it is the possibility of losing it.

His adventures take him underground, to a place that he thought only lived in the darker recesses of his imagination. To find it actually exists comes as a bit of a shock, and what he finds there makes his imagination seem quite tame in comparison. The narrative returns to the island again. Things are afoot there now, and he knows that as the tension builds, he is going to be caught up in the maelstrom.

This is quite some book. It is the first of Tchaikovsky’s that I have read, and I thought it was astonishing. Where he has imagined this world from is a complete mystery. That said, there are elements of it that do feel familiar. There are hints of Venice and the lagoon in which it is located in. The remote prison where criminals and other prisoners that the authorities want to have removed for their convenience is a common happening in societies, even today. Then he has layered that world with all sorts of things that will shock and possibly scare you in equal measure. There are two books that it reminded me of were Paradox by John Meaney and Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. If you have read and liked those books, then I can wholeheartedly recommend this too.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

I first came across Lemurs when I went to Jersey Zoo (or Durrell as it was back then), and they had a number of different species that they were breeding to hopefully be able to return to the wild. They are beautiful animals and were the flagship species that they were using to promote all sorts of conservation and recovery programmes that they were undertaking in the islands of Madagascar.

This huge island off the coast of Africa is pretty unique. It has been isolated for millions of years that the evolutionary paths that the animals have taken to fill the niches that all habitats have generated richness and diversity of animals that exist nowhere else on earth. It sounds like an amazing place.

However, these animals are threatened. Partly by climate change as it slowly wreaks its havoc on global weather patterns, but mostly by humans. Yep, us. Again. So most of the 217 species that are covered in the book have some sort of habitat degradation or fragmentation, or it has just been removed wholesale because of logging and mineral extraction.

There are several sections to the book, with details on regions and habitats, places to go and see some of these fantastic mammals and even a section on those strange and often huge animals that have sadly been lost because of extinction. However, the majority of the book is about the species that can still be found there.

There is an incredibly dense amount of information in here. It is subdivided into tenrecs, bats, lemurs and carnivores. Each species has a section to itself and contains a wealth of information on the location, how threatened they are, habitat, population size and then details on where to find them should you wish to make the arduous journey to some of the more remote parts of the island.

It did take me quite a while to get through, as there is so much detailed information within. It does read like an academic journal, which is hardly surprising, really. I couldn’t quite believe how many lemur species there were! But alongside this mass of up-to-date information are wonderful photos of the species being written about, some of which are rarely photographed, given their remote location on the island. Well worth reading if you are interested in the fauna of Madagascar at any level.

This is the second Tales Of The Weird book that draws its material from Cornwall. Passey, whilst researching the first book, Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, found loads of different stories set in the county. There were too many for that first volume, hence this second bite of the poisoned cherry…

The Spectre Ship Of Porthcurno – Robert Hunt

A very brief story of a ghost ship that would sail up the beach, across the land, and then disappear. It is linked to a man who lived in Chygwiden and who was rumoured to be a pirate or buccaneer. He loved to go to sea in the most stormy weather and always seemed to survive.

The Wrecker And The Deathship – William Bottrell

A man appeared in a village from places unknown. He was wealthy enough to live by independent means and soon married a widow. There were a suspicious number of boats wrecked on the rocks beneath his house. This would come back to haunt him in his dying days…

The Toll Of Charon – Richard Dowling

A melancholic and grim tale about a girl who is left alone in Cornwall after her father passes away. They were not from the area originally, so she had no family or other support network.
She decides that her only option is to follow her dream of selling songs and music, so heads off to London to seek her fortune…

The Ghost Of The Treasure Chamber – Emily Arnold

I liked this story about a girl who is sent from India to Cornwall to live with relatives to help with her health. On the boat over she meets a clairvoyant and is persuaded to have a session with her. She sees a man in armour in her vision and it scares and unnerves her slightly.
She settles in with her family in their house, but soon learns that they will have to leave in the coming months to service debts, unless the family legend is true…

Dr Wygram’s Son – G. M. McCrie

A very strange tale about a doctor’s son who is laid low with an illness. His father decides to treat him with a most unusual type of cure. The narrator of the story has promised in the past to be of assistance and hurries to the house in Cornwall to fulfil that.

The Man Who Coined His Blood Into Gold – J. H. Pearce

A moral tale of greed and a reminder of why you shouldn’t trust the little folk in everything that they promise. The story is set in that most Cornish of places, a mine. (No not a pasty shop).

A Pair Of Hands – Arthur Quiller Couch

A tale of a house and a maid, oh and a ghost. It is only a little ghost, who is hardly any trouble at all and had a rather sweet nature.

Aunt Joanna – Sabine Baring-Gould

An elderly, deeply religious and quite crotchety lady is neighbours to a couple. She passes away one night and they take on the responsibility of making arrangements for her funeral. Whilst sorting things out they make a discovery that surprises them. After she is interred, they are haunted by her ghost as she searches their house for what was once hers…

Father Brent’s Tale – R. H. Benson

A disturbance on the river sounds like a large ship passing. He can see where the bow wave has washed but there is nothing to see at all. What ever it was that passed by though has severely disturbed the boy in the house…

The Ghost of Carnaquilla – Elliott O’Donnell

This story reminded me of one of my favourite childhood stories, Stig Of The Dump. I liked it, but I didn’t find it very chilling or ghostly.

The Misanthrope – J. D. Beresford

A weird tale about a man who had chosen to isolate himself from humanity. He has a skill that means when he looks at people in a particular way, he sees their true character. Quite cleverly written.

Negotium Perambulans – E. F. Benson

A man who is living in a rebuilt church is found dead in that building one day. But how he is found and what is seen sends terror throughout the locals, who decide never to go near the place again.
Then, a Mr Dooliss comes and decides to rebuild the church, but is very reluctant to welcome visitors. Know one knows if the thing that is seen before will return…

The Iron Pineapple – Eden Phillpotts

This is a very odd story about a man who is driven by his obsessions, and that leads to a series of events…

Love

This section has a series of letters, poems and notes to this only planet that we have to keep us alive in this vast universe. They very from the simple four line poem to the complex and deep stanza. There are simple thanks you’s to a beleaguered planet and longer more intimate letters from people who see the bigger picture.

Loss

This is a really painful set of letters and poems to read. People are mourning the loss of animals and landscapes as humans exert mass destruction over almost every domain on the planet. It is full of anger and remorse for the damage we have caused so far and the destruction that is yet to come. The authors of these are also angry at themselves that they seem unable to make a difference and livid that politicians, who are often funded by vested interests, actively want to keep things as they are or make them worse.

Emergence

This is a reminder that we are at a turning point or crossroads with regards to the climate and collapse in natures diversity. The decisions that we collectively make in this emergency with determine our outcomes in the coming years. We could end up with a better world, or a shaky future, or societal collapse. Only time and history will tell…

Hope

Even though the news on climate is constantly grim, it looks like the 1.5°C target is long past now, there is a possibility that we could keep it under a 2°C global average. We just need comprehensive and fast political action. The authors of the pieces in this section still have hope; hope that change can happen; hope that change will have the desired effect and hope that actions large and small can make that difference.

Someone wise once told me, do not try to change the minds of those with power, they do not list and are never affected. She said to create change, go to the people. – Ashby Martin 18

Action

This final section is all about the action that we all need to take, both collectively and individually. The people writing these pieces really get the urgency behind taking this action now.

You may think that you are simply one small positive
droplet in an ocean of troubles. A droplet can’t do
anything. But if you search our ever expanding ocean
You will find millions of other small droplets with the
same mindset as yourself. Together you form a sea in
an ocean. That sea can stir a storm. That sea can
Make a change

Harkiran S. S. Dhingra 15

I thought that this was a well-balanced collection of letters, poems and other sorts of prose. It is a great mix of people that you might have heard of and, most importantly, people that you haven’t who are equally committed to seeing action on climate change. As has been said many times before, there is no planet B,  and the more we bugger this one up then the more we will be masters of our own doom. The plant will survive. We won’t.

Well worth reading in my opinion, and if you choose to read it too, then do everything that you can to help combat climate change.

A recap of what I set out to do last year and a summary of how badly it went…

Blogging

As I said last year, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. I have never had a huge following on social media, there are some out there who have 100K followers which is just staggering. I tend to have a niche reading interest, which may reflect my much lower following too. It has changed since I started, even what I thought were popular bloggers seems to have slipped from the limelight. Probably because everyone seems to be chasing the latest trends. I have never been that fashionable so I will keep doing what I am doing.

Still here and still blogging. I have found a better routine for note taking for review books that seems to be working well. Just need to work on the backlog. How do people out there deal with unsolicited books? Read and review or pass on if not interested?

Books

Review Books

I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. I am making a concerted plan to work through all of the review books that I have been sent and much reducing the number that I request still further. That said, I would be delighted to receive some of the books that were on my anticipated list… However, it is not a deal breaker, books that I really want to read I can get from the library or buy if necessary. I am hoping to read and review at least 60 books next year from that list.

I did manage to read 32 review books over the course of 2025. This was much less than I had been aiming for mostly because of the next category.

My Own Books

I have been cataloguing the books that I have in the past few months, and have found numerous duplicates. Some I am keeping for one reason or another and I have passed on quite a lot so far. There are a few more to go, so keep an eye on my social media channels. The plan is to buy fewer books (HA!!) and I have been keeping a tally of book that came in and left the house for good. I can share those figures in my 2024 review, they are quite scary!

I did manage to read 59 of my own books that had been anguishing on shelves for far too long over the course of 2025. Plus there were four that I had borrowed (from my daughter) that I read for the bookclub!

Library Books

I have got further down on the number of library books that I have out on both cars and have just under one shelf now. There is going to be a bit of a bump as the books I have reserved a while back finally turn up but I am aiming to get it to around 30 fairly soon.

I did manage to read 55 library books over the course of 2025. This was way more that I was intending to do, and was caused by a lot of reservations that then other had reserved!

Reading Plans

I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I feel that I got the balance right between travel writing and natural history books last year, but as these make up the bulk of my collection, then I want to read more of them. I also want to read more science fiction and fiction, because, hey, why not? I also have some other intentions detailed below, that whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve.

This kind of worked, and kind of didn’t as the need to read some other books took over! Still the same plan for this year though

Themed Reads

This was an idea that I had a little while back, to pick a theme each month and read three or four books on that chosen subject from my gargantuan TBR. So next year I am going to do it. Here are the themes that I have picked for 2025.

Architecture
Art
Business / Economics
Environment
Food & Drink
History
Language
London
Maths
Memoir
Venice
Walking

This was based on an ide to read about a particular subject with a wider context. I did manged two books from the three that I wanted to some months and other months failed miserably! Not intending on doing it this year, but will probably do it in 2027

Female Authors

I am going to keep my target of reading women authors at 40% for 2025.

I made 36%, or 54 female authors this year. A little disappointed with this.

Ethnic Minority Authors

I had my target set to 12 last year and I am going to set the same again for 2024. Slowly more ethnic minority authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly too few still.

I ended up reading 15 which I am really pleased about

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

I ended up reading 14 Sci-Fi and fantasy over the year.

Fiction

I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. This year I am going to make an effort to read at least one fiction book a month. I probably won’t review them, but it depends on the book.

I ended up reading 13 fiction books over the year.

Poetry

I am aiming to read one poetry book a month this year again.

Succeeded in this intention!

Literary Awards

Last year I was a bit better at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (as usual). I did manage to read some from the minor prizes too, but still have a long list of books that I haven’t quite got to read yet… The same list of prizes from last year:

Wainwright
Stanford
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke

I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
The Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize

I did read a few of the books that appeared on these prizes, but as ever, not as many as I hoped. Aiming to read the Stanford’s 2026 list this year as I actually had all the books!

Challenges

I have concluded that challenges are great but they can distract me from reading the backlog that I have. I am going to stick to the 20 books of summer as I use that to clear a particular genre. I read fiction in 2024 and I am aiming to read science fiction for 2025.

The World From My Armchair Challenge

My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I did slightly better at this in 2024 as I read four books for the challenge. I have twelve lined up for this and there will be an update on a blog post sometime in the first part of the year.

Had meant to read 12 but only read three! Three! There is this year…

20 Books of Summer

This is run by the blogger, Cathy of 746 books. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again this summer. I did manage to read all 20 books this year too, but finished the last well into autumn!

I read about ten by end of the year. But they were big chunky sci fi books so…

Other Bookish Stuff

Cataloguing Books

I am still cataloguing books! I have completed all nine that were in the original post, and have added in two more with another about to be filled soon. I have 2610 according to my spreadsheet and 312 of those are signed. According to the list I have read 882 and not read 1727! I thought I had read more of them than that!!! The spreadsheet is set up with a shelf number so I can find books when I need them!

This is ongoing. I am not trying to find some of the books that I thought that I had, but may well have been passed on. The search continues.
Totals now stand at
Total 2475
Read 812
Unread 1662

Spreadsheets

I wrote about this back in 2023 here. I have now made further refinements and will write another post about these changes early next year. (It was going to be this year, and I have the notes to type up, but not done it yet). My main master sheet works so much better than before!

This is an ongoing irritative process and I am still tweaking them as I go along.

Bookshelves

I wrote a blog post showing all my shelves here. I have drawn up a plan for what genre of books that I want on what shelf and still have not sorted it out! There are gaps on the shelves that I need to start shuffling around based on the plan. Let me know if you want to see more of my bookshelves in a blog post.

Not really got to this as yet. If we ever move this will get sorted properly (plus I need to clear another 400 books or so…)

Planning Matrix

To try and get a grip on what books I want to read and when I have started to do things on what I call a Planning Matrix. Yes, it’s another spreadsheet and it is based on the set-up that I have developed, but uses a grid to collate what categories a particular book fits. I am finding it quite useful so far. If you want to hear more about it, let me know and I will include it in the spreadsheet post next year.

On its fourth version at the moment. I keep thinking I am going to have to change to a database at some point…

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

At the age of ten, Mia Corvere witnesses her first execution. It is a moment that will change her life and her destiny forever. The desire to have retribution against those who slighted her family burns fiercely within her.

To do so she must embrace that fury and become a weapon without equal. She decides that she must join the Red Church of Itreya and become one of their very best assassins. However, surviving a building full of murderers is going to take some doing…

Her and her fellow acolytes’ training is intense, bloody, brutal and relentless. She makes friends with some of them, others she is ambivalent about, and there are others that will become enemies for life…

The training covers every method that they can think of for killing people, but the Red Church has another range of methods of death that their imaginations have not even considered yet.
Not every acolyte will make it to the end of the course and be in the final selection. The rate of attrition is high for failure, and they have to be aware that things that they have recently learnt will be used against them. She doesn’t know if any of her friends will be there at the end, let alone if she has enough mental strength to pass the course.

It is a fast-paced and thrilling ride. There were parts of this book that I liked, the imagination it takes to come up with this assassin’s church and the world-building I particularly liked. The plot is half decent, too. I could predict some of the outcomes, main character, first book in a series, etc, etc, but not the journey that he drapes around the characters, to the ending. There were parts I wasn’t that keen on, it is incredibly violent, so might not be for everyone. He is also keen on info dumps, and I thought that these got in the way of the plot sometimes. Most annoying were the footnotes; I’ve grown up reading Pratchett, who was a master at them, but Kristoff’s were huge and, in my opinion, mostly unnecessary. So overall, not bad, but I’ll probably not bother to read the rest in the series.

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Who says that blokes don’t read romance? That is quite a few of you then… Romance is the genre that I deliberately avoid, or more appropriately, run screaming from the boudoir… However, this is one of the fine offerings from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird Series, and the title Doomed Romances bring a whole different connotation to the word…

The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley

This is the first Mary Shelley story that I have ever read! It is a strange tale of love and loss with whispers of folklore ad fairy tale woven in. But the strongest theme is the gothic melodrama that permeates the prose completely.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu

A very gothic melodrama with vampires. I felt it was very overwritten; why use one word when you could use twenty instead? There is a strong lesbian theme between the daughter and the lady who is staying as a guest in the house.

Mr. Captain and the Nymph by Wilkie Collins

Somewhere in the Pacific, a ship encounters an island. The natives that live there seem friendly and welcoming, so the sailors go ashore, and it allows them to restock supplies. Alongside the main island is another, and they are curious as to what or who is on there. The natives strongly recommend that they do not set foot on the island as it is the home of a sorcerer, and it is a taboo for anyone else but him and the nymph to be there. The captain of the ship is told about her, and when he sees her through the telescope, he becomes besotted. So much so that he is brave and foolish enough to venture onto the island…

Little Woman in Black by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Miss Sarah Pawlett was engaged to be married to Lord Bellenden. The relationship was a little unusual as she wasn’t from the aristocracy, as would be expected at the time. But this didn’t deter, Lord Bellenden.

The only problem, though, was that Sarah was head over heels in love with another actor called Ned Langley. Plus, there was a sense that she was being watched continually, and there was a small lady dressed entirely in black who sat in the same seat for every performance each night.

Who this lady was, though, would soon be revealed…

White Magic by Ella D’Arcy

I wasn’t overly enamoured with this story. It is a conversation between the narrator and their friend, but having read it twice, I wasn’t completely sure what was going on or what were the subtleties of the plot.

The Tiger Charm by Alice Perrin

This is a story set in the time of the British Raj in India. A blustering colonel sets out on a tiger hunt, dragging his wife with him. They are separated after an incident and she ends up switching to another elephant and then they are separated. When she returns, he accuses her of all sorts of transgressions that might have taken place with her new companion in his drunken rant. He still wants to shoot a tiger, though, so he sets out with her companion, with a darker motive in mind…

One Remained Behind by Marjorie Bowen

A student called Rudolph is desperate to acquire a grimoire, a book full of magic and ancient rituals and ends up arguing with an antique bookseller whose shop it is in. With a trick and some emotional blackmail, he manages to make the book his.

He wastes no time in using the book to gain fame and fortune. However, he had not ever thought through the consequences of his actions, and it all starts to unravel.
I really liked this story a lot. There is something quite satisfying about Karma…

The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter

I thought that this was the story that best suited the title of the book, Doomed Romances. The young lady is in a decrepit mansion with a crone as a servant. There is an innocent young soldier who stops for the night. There is a building tension as I, the reader, can second-guess his possible fate.

That said, I didn’t find it that scary. But it does have a brooding intensity that made it my top story in the collection.

The Glass Bottle Trick by Nalo Hopkinson

This is a really dark story about a man who has been widowed twice before and is now married to his third wife. They had married fairly quickly after meeting and courting, and were soon to learn that his moods were dark and his temper short.

Passing on her news was going to be a challenge that she wasn’t sure she could do…
I thought this was an incredibly intense and fast-paced story.

Could You Wear My Eyes? by Kalumu Ya Salaam

I thought that this was a well-crafted story about a man who thought that having his late wife’s eyes implanted to replace his.
What he didn’t realise was what the effect of seeing everything from her perspective would be like…

I’ll Be Your Mirror by Tracy Fahey
A story of love, anatomy and discovery by a woman who becomes obsessed by an anatomical Venus, a life-sized wax model. Very much more macabre than romantic, and has a very dark plotline.

Dancehall Devil by V. Castro
I thought that this was probably the closest story in the book to horror. A woman has just entered a club and she is approached by a man who has absolutely no idea what her has just let himself in for…

3 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Fred Fredricks has an important delivery to make to someone on the moon. It is his first time there, and everything about the trip is strange. On the space flight over, he meets Ta Shu, a celebrity travel reporter and feng shui expert who agrees to meet with him again later in their visit to the moon. It is all going well until Fredricks meets the recipient of the package he is delivering, and it rapidly goes horribly wrong.

Fredricks is taken into custody following the incident. As he is an American and working for a Swiss company, there is a diplomatic standoff. Somehow, he manages to escape and joins a lady called Chan Qi, who is being sent back to Earth. They travel back with Ta Shu to China, where they evade the authorities on arrival and head to a safe house for a while. After being couped up, it gets to them, and they make a miscalculation on just how close the people looking for them are. They have to go on the run again, but they know the authorities are closing in on them.

One of the myriad factions in the Chinese security services that is sympathetic to Chan Qi has made the decision that they would be safer back on the moon and not be a distraction to the other factions on Earth. Once again, they are dispatched back on a space flight to stay in a super-rich gentleman’s called Fang Fei’s place. He is a businessman, and he has a separate base on the moon.

Even though she is 238,000 miles away, there are still people after her. They decide to hitch a ride with a couple of helium miners to an even more remote part of the moon. She decides that this is the time to send a coded message to her supporters in China, to add to the disruption as a power struggle for the president of China begins.

I have tried to keep the plot details as sparse as possible, to minimise spoilers, but there are a few. I would say that I liked rather than loved this; I had expected it to be entirely set on the moon, and was a little disappointed that it wasn’t. I would have liked it if Fred’s character had played a larger role in the story too; he was there as a bit of a stooge to the main character, Chan Qi. I felt it could have been a bit shorter, too. There were times when it dragged a bit, until the last quarter, when it flew by. Not bad overall, but not the best of his that I have read.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Be a traveller, not a tourist, is a phrase that is often attributed to the late Anthony Bourdain. But is there a difference between a traveller and a tourist, though? Some people think that there is, and surprise, surprise, others don’t… Though I do like Paul Theroux’s definition: Tourists don’t know where they have been, travellers don’t know where they are going.

Daniel Maurer considered himself a traveller, following in the footsteps of Bourdain, but it slowly dawned on him that maybe he was just a tourist.

Travel for almost everyone stopped during the pandemic. It took a while, but the world slowly opened up again, and Maurer became, not by choice, a digital nomad.

He ends up in Mexico and tries to find an authentic town to live in that isn’t overrun with tourists (sic). In this modern world, just the mention of a place can see massive crowds of people flocking to visit. This can have an enormous detrimental effect on the are and the people when this happens.

He is only moderately scathing on travel influencers and the lack of transparency that they have with regard to their sponsors. He is even less enamoured by AI assistants, seeing them as boring, predictable and often error-prone.

Being a travel nomad puts him in the gig economy. Yes, living is much cheaper in Mexico than in the States, but getting paid work meant that he had to lower his prices.

Moving on to Argentina, he finds that having dollars in his pocket means that he can live like a king. However, he soon learns to keep quiet about this as Argentinians are suffering from the effects of high inflation. As the economy there slowly implodes, he decides that he would be better off in Spain, the home country of his mother.

It is another country that is suffering from a massive hike in tourists and all of the accompanying problems that they bring with them. This is a phenomenon that is happening all around the world at the moment as locals struggle to cope with increasing self-entitled tourists. Instagrammable sites are super popular and these are now getting restrictions on the number of visitors that can attend.

The arrival of lots of digital nomads means that the local economies have changed completely. Rents and other expenses rise dramatically, locking out locals from the homes that they need. We have seen this effect in Cornwall and other places in the UK. Countries that were once offering golden visas are quietly dropping them. Plus, there is a concerted effort in Europe to restrict the number of short-term rental properties available.

During the time that he spends in Barcelona, he comes to see for himself how the tourists or guiri, and they are known there, are becoming less and less welcome. The city is beginning to restrict how many shops selling tourist tat are allowed. In July 2024, there was a huge protest against tourism; visitors were squirted with water pistols and attractions were cordoned off with fake police tape.

‘The idea of ‘I’m not like the others’ is very egocentric,’ Pardo said. ‘I think it isn’t possible nowadays to come to Barcelona and not be a tourist. If you come, you must accept it: you are just another piece of the mass. And it’s not each person, it’s the mass that is killing the city.

Cruise ships are also becoming a target for locals’ ire. The island of Ibitha can get three huge ships a day, and these can bring 10,00 disembarking from the ships. 10,000! This huge influx of people, coupled with the fact that the ships pollute a lot, are not particularly green and sustainable. Some countries are now starting to limit the number of ships docking and are insisting that low-sulphur fuels are used to combat pollution.

Other places are pushing back on anti-social behaviour too, restricting drink sales for example. In a twist of irony that you couldn’t make up, the anti-tourism protests have become a tourist attraction in their own right.

Like in other countries, migration is becoming a political hot potato, and this is causing some countries to lurch towards right-wing parties. Strangely, though, the predominantly right-wing capitalist system demands that low-paid workers exist to maximise company profits and executive pay. Utterly mad system when you think about it.

Maurer visits Expo 2025 to see what the future of travel offers from a corporate point of view and would it would look like. Having read his description of the event, I think it sounds horrendous… Whilst tech and apps could offer assistance in finding lovely places to visit, it struck me most as being a way to fleece consumers from increasingly larger sums of money.

One good this was that countries are now offering regenerative tourism. You help in some way or other, and you are granted benefits in kind. Key to it is that you are helping the area that you are staying in, rather than money disappearing into the corporate coffers.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell – Edward Abbey

How do we answer that Maurer poses at the end of the book:

Can we learn to move as thoughtfully as we can, as carefully as we can?

I thought that this was a really interesting book. Through numerous examples, he asks some very thought-provoking questions about the nature of travel and tourism and it made me think about just how it is affecting people and places that are becoming inundated with thousands of people on a regular basis.

I do feel, though, that he didn’t fully answer the question that he posed in the book; so, what do we do about travel? Not that this is a fault, he wants you to think about the consequences of what you do and where you go and the choices that you make. We have to make sensible and sustainable decisions going forward.

If you like to travel, then this book would be a great place to start before you book that next flight or holiday.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Like all good plans, the idea for this trip formed over a few beers one evening. With his friends, Danny, they had been putting the world to rights before Danny finally got around to asking him the question that had been distracting him for a while. Had he heard of Interrail? Quite a daft question to ask a travel writer.

Of course, he had.

The reason for the question was that Danny had seen that they were having a half-price sale to celebrate 50 years of the service. Danny had the idea that they should spend an entire month travelling around Europe. He was so enthused by the idea he had even broached the subject with his wife and been given a provisional pass.

They bought tickets there and then on the bench in Soho Square, before heading to Stanford’s to get a couple of maps. It didn’t take them long to concoct a plan, and they both knew the destination: Istanbul.

Sadly, a half-price Interrail ticket wouldn’t let them go on the horrendously priced Orient Express. Instead of spending vast amounts of time sorting their itinerary out, they decided to let serendipity reign and follow their instincts and the tracks. This, they hoped, would add a level of jeopardy to the trip and help them see a completely different range of places and people.

They arrived at St Pancras for the Eurostar in good time. There was a slight concern that their first destination, Paris, had been on fire because of riots. They were both slightly apprehensive as they disembarked the train in the station.

However, all seemed well as they alighted in Paris and they headed to their hotel, which just so happened to be in the same area that George Orwell stayed in many years before. They had a night out on and returned late to the hotel. Strasbourg was tomorrow’s destination and they had a train to catch early afternoon.

This was the beginning of the long winding route that would take them across Europe on their way to Istanbul. They pass through Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria; almost exclusively on trains, but with one trip on a bus because of strikes. It makes for entertaining reading, too, which, if you have read any of Chesshyre’s work before, you’d be familiar with. They get on really well and their account of their travels out there did make me laugh a lot at times.

After they reached Istanbul, Danny had elected to fly back home to relieve his wife from looking after the three children. Chesshyre was going to have to make his own way home, a challenge he relished. Rather than go back the way he had come, he chose a route that would take him through Greece, across the Adriatic to Italy and along one of the world’s most beautiful railway lines in Switzerland and then onward to the Netherlands.

I have read a number of Chesshyre’s books in the past, so I was really looking forward to this, and I am glad to say, it didn’t disappoint at all. It is both an entertaining and informative read. He has a keen eye for detail and particularly likes the variety of stations and the architectural differences they have. I haven’t expanded on the events of the route, because I think that this is something you should read and discover for yourselves when you read it. This is something that I can wholeheartedly recommend that you do.