February Reading Review
Here I write about what I have read in the past month and hope you find something you would like to read too. This month contains physical books and plenty of short stories and novellas on Substack.
Books Read 2025 - 4/52
On Paper
All Under Heaven by Rayne Kruger
I have read a number of these all-encompassing histories of China and each one highlights vastly different elements of her 4000 years of history. While my favourite era, the end of the Han and the Three Kingdoms period, is often condensed to a few dozen pages the whole history is fascinating. Throughout the cycles of dynastic change, disasters, natural and man made, and the technological advancement - such as the compass centuries before Europe for the purposes of geomancy around the 2nd century BC before being applied to military uses in the 11th century AD and then sailing shortly after in the 12th century AD, though there is reference to iron lodestone and the “south pointing fish” as early as the 4th century BC - it becomes clear there is a rhythm of human behaviour playing out between Emperor, Bureaucrats/Eunuchs, and the People all tangled within Heaven’s Decree. Disaster, whether environmental or manmade, occurs and a strong leader emerges to tackle it, sometimes he succeeds new laws are made that are harsh and strictly enforced. Government is slim, taxes fair, the treasuries full, and the Emperor has the Mandate of Heaven. Within a generation or two the laws are softened, enforcement grows lax the government balloons, expenditure with it, and the treasuries are drained, taxes are increased, despair spreads the Mandate is lost and either a dynasty is brought down or a coup occurs with some cousin or brother being made Emperor to establish continuity. Of course this is simplified but some variant of this story plays out in the Han, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing dynasties, whether it will play out in the CCP dynasty is probable but the current regime of China is young, the CCP is 104 years old, while the People’s Republic was only proclaimed 75 years ago, and dynasties often last hundreds of years. However, between the dynasties named above are periods of protracted war where smaller dynasties and kingdoms are proclaimed and fight it out, some becoming hegemonic for a couple decades at a time.
If you are at all interested in reading Chinese history this book is a good start, readable and not too long. Another good one is Jonathan Fenby’s Dragon Throne which tells China’s history through each Emperor’s eyes. I would not recommend John Keay’s China unless you read more academic history or don’t mind a very slow and detailed read.
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This is in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold a series about time travel in coffee shops but you can’t change events only feelings and knowledge, and there you only have from the point coffee is poured to when it gets cold at which point if you haven’t drank it you become a ghost. And you can’t move from a specific chair in the cafe. Or visit anyone who hasn’t also visited the cafe. You can go backwards or forwards through time, though forwards is a lot harder to pinpoint who and when you’re trying to meet. The books have 4 chapters, each a story about a person travelling through time to meet someone important, all revolving around some relationship issue or personal problem that must be overcome. Before Your Memory Fades is a solid entry with a frustrating ending to the overall plot which means it will linger in my memory while the ending I was expecting would have faded.
This series is translated from Japanese and as such the story is very much told. Japanese fiction, and this series, is often to the point, straightforward, and plainly written. Don’t expect poetical or implicit writing.
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I am currently slogging my way through Niall Ferguson’s Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe which is about disasters in humanity’s history and how they impacted the world. It is long but takes a long time to say anything resulting in a ponderous read.
On SubStack
First up is
’s Tupelo, Honey, a western which Josh is quickly becoming a master at penning. A story with a healthy amount of gunslinging and illicit love affairs written in a satisfyingly crisp manner.
Next is another
western with less gunslinging but just as rich language that feels like the wild west. His skill with the western is in the words he chooses and how the sentences fit together, it all pulls you in to a world of horses, dust prairies, and revolvers.Prisoner of the Megacorp is a promising opening for
’s new serial (I don’t know how long it will be). Full of tension and questions, with a protagonist you want to succeed.’s forray into scifi has been a breakout success. The Lightbreakers of Orpheus is a tantalising tale following the treatment of a captured Rebel soldier who is brainwashed to listen to “the Voice” at all times and “self-terminate” if captured. Serialised flash fiction on Friday for Science Fiction Friday, well worth a read.
Sinkhole is a horror tale about things that should remain hidden and the curses that follow when the do not.
has done great work with this one.
See you next month for March’s review.
Thank you for reading!
Glad you're enjoying Prisoner of the Megacorp. At the risk of spoiling, the serial will be 5 stories long. I've got three published so far, so I'm about halfway there.