Siobhan Dunlop (Author of No Holds Bard)

Siobhan rated a book really liked it Radical Love by Neil Blackmore (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Radical Love is a novel about the real life Vere Street Coterie, narrated by the radical preacher who performed queer marriages at the Vere Street molly house. It is the early nineteenth century in London and John Church preaches to his congregation ...more
Mar 26, 2023 04:25AM · like · see review
Siobhan is currently reading The Honeys by Ryan La Sala (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 25, 2023 05:22PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Honeys by Ryan La Sala. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Honeys by Ryan La Sala <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Siobhan is currently reading Radical Love by Neil Blackmore (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Siobhan rated a book really liked it Bitter Apples by Eric Raglin (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Bitter Apples is a collection of horror stories about teaching, written by teachers and exploring both realities and dark permutations of both school and university level teaching. There are seven stories in the book, each quite different and using d ...more
Mar 25, 2023 10:56AM · like · see review
Siobhan rated a book it was amazing Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 25, 2023 04:01AM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Siobhan rated a book it was amazing fourteen poems: issue 9 by Ben Townley-Canning	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Siobhan is currently reading Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White (Goodreads Author) Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee in Best Young Adult Fiction	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 22, 2023 04:47AM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Siobhan rated a book liked it The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet by Jeff Jarvis	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Gutenberg Parenthesis is a book about the history of printing and what we might learn from it to take forward with the internet and media as it is, all through the lens of the idea that the age of printing revolutionised by Gutenberg's invention ...more
Mar 22, 2023 04:45AM · 1 like · like · see review
Siobhan rated a book really liked it The Shadow Cabinet (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #2) by Juno Dawson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Shadow Cabinet is the second in Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven series, following on from the first book left off in this alternate modern day where there are witches and warlocks secretly living around the world. Book one's cliffhanger become ...more
Mar 22, 2023 03:16AM · like · see review
Siobhan rated a book it was amazing An Othered Mother by Jem Henderson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Loved the style(s) of the poems in this pamphlet, from the opening clever take on a consent form onwards, and it is a powerful look at family and what we are made of.
Mar 21, 2023 01:30AM · like · see review

Siobhan rated a book really liked it

Radical Love
by Neil Blackmore (Goodreads Author)

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Radical Love is a novel about the real life Vere Street Coterie, narrated by the radical preacher who performed queer marriages at the Vere Street molly house. It is the early nineteenth century in London and John Church preaches to his congregation Radical Love is a novel about the real life Vere Street Coterie, narrated by the radical preacher who performed queer marriages at the Vere Street molly house. It is the early nineteenth century in London and John Church preaches to his congregation on the importance of tolerance and the radical nature of love. In the evening he visits the molly house on Vere Street, where he performs weekly marriages and sees people living out their lives how they cannot more openly. When he meets Ned, a Black man who is part of the group of African abolitionists who visit John's church, he falls into an obsessive love that he would do anything to protect.

What I didn't expect from the book's blurb was that it would have such a notably unreliable narrator, and the way Blackmore builds John Church's story makes it a fascinating look at creating a character who misleads the reader, who is directly addressed, and other characters, whilst also at times seeming to believe his own lies as they help him keep his sanity. The book takes a historical figure who clearly had a complex life and imagines what he might have done to build a world to survive in, at a dangerous time. At the same time, Church is a complicated character, drawing readers' sympathy and dislike as he manipulates and lies to create the image of the perfect radical love that he preaches.

The historical moment depicted in the novel is vivid, with a possibly rosy haze at times that comes from Church's first person narration. Though the book depicts real events, as Blackmore explains at the end there are some elements that had to be imagined, like a life for Ned, and the narration style means that it is positioned in a subjective way, rather than a historical novel that offers multiple perspectives or more in-depth detail. The pace of the end is much faster than the start, with quite dramatic events covered quickly and not much time to explore some of the later revelations.

The way Blackmore uses Church's unreliable narration as a way of exploring queer history and the moral complexity of survival and obsessive love works well in the book and made it a more interesting style of historical novel than what I was expecting, though there is a lot for it to cover just through the perspective of one figure and there's some stuff in it that therefore can't be done justice to. It is a book about love and desire, but also ideals and opinions and how queer history is messy, even when the narrator sometimes tries to make it appear less so. ...more

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The Honeys
by Ryan La Sala (Goodreads Author)

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Siobhan is currently reading

Radical Love
by Neil Blackmore (Goodreads Author)

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Bitter Apples
by Eric Raglin (Goodreads Author)

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Bitter Apples is a collection of horror stories about teaching, written by teachers and exploring both realities and dark permutations of both school and university level teaching. There are seven stories in the book, each quite different and using d ...more

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Hell Followed With Us
by Andrew Joseph White (Goodreads Author)

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Siobhan rated a book it was amazing

fourteen poems: issue 9
by Ben Townley-Canning

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Hell Followed With Us
by Andrew Joseph White (Goodreads Author)
Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee in Best Young Adult Fiction

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The Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis

The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet
by Jeff Jarvis

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The Gutenberg Parenthesis is a book about the history of printing and what we might learn from it to take forward with the internet and media as it is, all through the lens of the idea that the age of printing revolutionised by Gutenberg's invention ...more

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The Shadow Cabinet (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #2)
by Juno Dawson

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The Shadow Cabinet is the second in Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven series, following on from the first book left off in this alternate modern day where there are witches and warlocks secretly living around the world. Book one's cliffhanger become The Shadow Cabinet is the second in Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven series, following on from the first book left off in this alternate modern day where there are witches and warlocks secretly living around the world. Book one's cliffhanger becomes some of the focus of this one, as Ciara is now impersonating her sister Niamh to try and work out why she was helped to come back, as well as keeping Theo, Elle, and HMRC off the scent about the truth of who she is. There's also the warlock Dabney Hale, escaped and after power, so Leonie sets off after him to try and find her brother. And then there's the bureaucracy of HMRC and the Shadow Cabinet, where the British government actually know about the existence of witches.

Just like the first book, there's a lot packed into this one, with chapters from a range of characters' points of view and lots of threads to follow. The narrative starts slow, with a lot needing to happen and be set up before the big conclusion to the book, and then starts to pick up later on, before a climax that resolves more than I expected for a second book in a series, whilst still leaving plenty of loose threads (and a cliffhanger, like book one) for the next one. It takes a while to understand how the title is going to come into play, and it's a nice element that it vital to the plot, but also doesn't appear that much as there's so much else going on.

The book focuses a lot around misogyny and, like book one found ways of both explicitly and implicitly tackling transphobia, The Shadow Cabinet does similarly with misogyny and with what can be broadly termed the 'manosphere', with multiple groups of men who think their beliefs about the place of women and witches to be correct. The uneven power between witches and warlocks is particularly interesting, and though it wasn't delved into that much, it would definitely be something to address more in book three: magic in the books is very binary and even unfair, and it would be good to see more about that, as it is clear characters have different view about it.

As there's so many characters and so much going on, you see varying amounts of each of them and their inner lives and motivations. Ciara is central to this book and I really enjoyed her story, as it brought in layers of complex morality and questions of agency that stands out against the black and white morality at points in the first book. I liked the use of demon summoning as something akin to alcohol or drugs in terms of being addictive and a way to escape your reality, and it would be really interesting to see more of the darker side of this series. Unsurprisingly given Dawson's YA skills, Theo and Holly are some of the best characters, though they don't get a huge amount of plot in this one, but it seems like that may change for book three.

As someone who isn't a big fan of fantasy, I appreciate how Dawson weaves together the magical and non-magical worlds in this series, combining interpersonal drama (that always ends up relevant to the main plot, too, in some way or another) with big dramatic magic stuff. The worldbuilding comes up when needed, but I could enjoy this one without remembering every detail from the first book.

The Shadow Cabinet is a solid sequel that really follows on from Her Majesty's Royal Coven, but also adds in some deeper exploration of the divided world of the books. I enjoyed the darker directions it went, particularly due to having Ciara as a main character, and I hope the aftermath of the events continues to be explored in the next one and the morality is messy and complicated, as it brings a lot of depth to something that could otherwise just be a straight 'good' and 'evil' story. Also, I hope Leonie and Chinara catch a break at some point! ...more

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An Othered Mother
by Jem Henderson (Goodreads Author)

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Loved the style(s) of the poems in this pamphlet, from the opening clever take on a consent form onwards, and it is a powerful look at family and what we are made of.

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	No Holds Bard: Modern LGBTQ+ fiction inspired by the works of William Shakespeare by Julie Bozza (Goodreads Author), Siobhan Dunlop (Goodreads Author), Adam Fitzroy 4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2018 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Queer Writing for a Brave New World by Anna Leach (Contributor), Essa Flett (Contributor), John Lugo-Trebble (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 4.33 avg rating — 6 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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