If I’m honest, I’ve been a bit “lazy” this year, managing only to find 6 notable reads that I was able to really say anything on.

Quite frankly I don’t care and that’s the point of these articles, to just talk about some books I read in the year. However, I did want to note that maybe this year’s article was going to be a bit shorter than the multi-thousand-word, 10-page dissertation on what I’ve uncovered through booktok/bookstagram. I couldn’t even tell you the big releases of the year because I’ve been too busy doing quite literally everything and anything else. Though, let’s not wallow in that, let’s get to the admittedly short list of books I’ve bothered to include this year.

Billy Billingham and Conor Woodman – Call to Kill

As noted at the end of 2023, I have an obscene fascination with spec-ops or SWAT work. Working with author and friend Conor Woodman, Mark “Billy” Billingham from ITV’s SAS: Who Dares Wins as well as the actual Special Air Service (SAS), the two weave a fairly standard thriller as we’ve seen from 24, Designated Survivor, anything of James Patterson and his ilk, and basically anything post-2001. That isn’t to say Call to Kill is bad, but it does mean that “Allahu Akbar” is used to tell you the Middle East is supposed to be dangerous because of brown people.

There are hints of empathy and understanding dashed throughout, but all the same, there is the “for Queen and country” pride thing you’d come to expect. The two create a “realistic,” and thrilling picture in your mind when it comes to taking down General Ruak Shahlai, a leading an Iran-backed Yemany terror cell striking at Saudi Arabia. What falters in the writing though is the “Romance” and sexual tension that is supposed to take place between the lead character Mace and any woman that simply exists. I see you Reacher. It feels like the transport to get us to the next point in the plot rather than something natural happening within the plot.

Octavia E Butler – Kindred

Last year, after Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I intended to move on to Octavia E Butler’s Kindred. The line being “Why not a time-travel story about racism and the Antebellum South, as written by a dyslexic Black woman in 1979?” after saying I should find something with a lighter tone. I never got far enough to say anything meaningful about Butler’s Kindred, at least enough to satisfy myself, mostly a self-serving jab at the people who would call the sci-fi story by a Black woman “Woke.” However, what I think needs to be said is that Kindred is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable if you are White.

It’s ok to be uncomfortable, but address that. Butler’s Kindred is a snapshot of the Black experience, not just the slave-era of American history but also the small things, from distrust of mixed-race couples, the use of slurs by children who don’t know better, and more. A very raw and necessary sci-fi (time travel) twist that often goes ignored by most fiction when featuring Black and brown characters.

Tamsyn Muir – Gideon the Ninth

Driving over the border of Germany into Denmark, rain peppered the windscreen like pockmarks on a battlefield, thunder flashing and nearly blinding me, and the sky darkening as the sun was lowering behind the surrounding trees, turning a section of the sky blood red. That’s the scene painted before me as I listened to Moira Quirk recite Harrowhark Nanogesimus’ lines in upper Received Pronunciation. Admittedly I didn’t start with the audiobook of Tamsyn Muir’s first of The Locked Tomb series, I got a couple of chapters in via eBook and knew I got the broad strokes, but wasn’t holding on to the subtext.

Set in a far-off system of nine planets, this beautifully dark, twisted, and delightful tale of necromancy, lesbians, indentured servitude, and exploration of a gothic palace wrapped its boney clutches around me. If you asked anyone I know how much they’d bet against me enjoying a science-fantasy novel (rather than Sci-fi), I’d assume the bet would be pretty significant. The only fantasy worlds I truly care about are that of The Witcher and my gays, Karlach and Shadowheart, and the theys from Baldur’s Gate 3. Though thankfully Gideon’s flitting hints of romance aren’t that of or for the male gaze, sticking to a solid adventure.

Justin Richards – Death Riders

I’ve always found horror in Doctor Who to be hard to enjoy, be it creatures that go bump in the night or the shoddy-looking monster running down the hall. I picked up Richards’ small tale for a couple of bucks last year and read a little bit, but never felt so enraptured that I must finish it in one sitting. Though arguably you could. Starring Amy, Rory, and The Doctor (you know which one), the triumvirate set off exploring a place Thatcher drowned, probably with all the milk she stole.

If I had to draw comparisons in iconography to other, more “popular” Who, I’d probably say the fair elements of this asteroid-mine with a fair in it are similar to Sarah Dollard’s “Thin Ice.” The mining, dark horror-themed cavernous elements of Richards’ story remind me of the Chris Chibnall (that’s not a good sign) story “The Hungry Earth” and “Cold Blood.” The latter of the comparisons very much is a Matt Smith-led showing. Paced a lot quicker than Chibnall’s twoddle, but I dare say he might have gotten to the same “meh” ending.

Murray Walker – Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken

“There is nothing wrong with the car, except it’s on fire.” With one of the longest careers in motorsport, Murray Walker stood to be one of the most entertaining and beloved commentators not just in Formula 1 but his many other loves. Like several books I’ve included and noted this year, this was another one I started in 2023, yet didn’t have much to say about it. As another autobiography (which I usually read at least one a year), Walker’s 2002 book came not long after he hung up the microphone, spanning a career from 1948 with hillclimb time trials to his final full-time season in open wheel racing.

What more can honestly be said about the man that many view as the true voice of Formula 1? Similar to my view that Alex Jacques is the voice of Formula 2, you can’t escape a “Murray-ism” even now in Formula 1 or occasionally other motorsport. To read about his life and his passion for everything he did, you could very much be mistaken to think he never worked a day in his life. If you’re a fan of motorsport find yourself a copy and enjoy it, and to quote the man himself, “Look up there! That’s the sky!”

Ben MacIntyre – Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

I’ve had many articles talking about the power of war and that power is destruction, but even I can admit there are special operations that are “needed.” There was no greater example of this than the role the SAS have played since World War II. Stuck in North Africa in the Layforce, after jumping out of an ill-fitted plane for parachuting, David Stirling set about building the L Detachment, or later SAS. The leading unit that sent Rommel and the Italians back, changing the tide of war in the North African campaign, later returning to Europe and setting about the hard work ahead of Operation Overlord.

Ben MacIntyre does a great job of recounting the history, the speculation, and general sentiment within the “rank and file” of the small group in North Africa and later Europe too. Never getting too in the way, MacIntyre lets the otherworldly missions take center stage. All of which is supposed to be adapted into TV, the first season of which is out with mostly English actors playing the three most prominent roles of Stirling, Mayne, and Lewes. Stirling is from Stirling and Mayne being Northern Irish, and mental. I guess that’s the BBC for you, can’t have regional actors to play the regional roles.

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