Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

· 2 comments · 200 words


Book cover.

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant…

Book Review: Sweet Harmony by Claire North

· 250 words


Book cover.

Claire North's new book is only £1.99 on Kindle, and I highly recommend it. This is a perfect novella. It is the sort of Sci-Fi which adds only one new thing to our world, then plays out the unintended consequences. What if you had nano-bots keeping you healthy? And what if you paid for upgrades? And then - what if you couldn't keep up with your payments and your health was repossessed? …

Book Review: The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands

· 500 words · Viewed ~249 times


A painting of Mary Seacole.

Mary Seacole left her native Jamaica to travel through the Caribbean, The Bahamas, Central America and to England. Keen to offer her services to English troops in the Crimea War, she was at first refused official support. Undaunted she went anyway and set up her famous hotel catering for British soldiers. Despite her invaluable contribution, she returned to England penniless and in ill health.…

Book Review: Doctor Who - Scratchman

· 600 words


The Doctor stands beneath a ragged sign saying Scratchman.

In his first-ever Doctor Who novel, Tom Baker’s incredible imagination is given free rein. A story so epic it was originally intended for the big screen, Scratchman is a gripping, white-knuckle thriller almost forty years in the making. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane Smith arrive at a remote Scottish island, when their holiday is cut short by the appearance of strange creatures – hideous sca…

Book Review: Algorithms of Oppression - Safiya Noble

· 400 words


Book cover showing some distressing Google searches.

Run a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in m…

Book Review: Shouting Zeros and Ones - Digital Technology, Ethics and Policy in New Zealand - Andrew Chen

· 1 comment · 350 words


A plain book cover.

‘Understanding how the zeros and ones increasingly influence and control our lives is critical to understanding how we can reciprocate influence and control back onto those zeros and ones.’ This vital book is a call to action: to reduce online harm, to protect the integrity of our digital lives and to uphold democratic participation and inclusion. A diverse group of contributors reveal the hid…

Book Review: The Thief on the Winged Horse - Kate Mascarenhas

· 300 words


A winged horse carved into a tree.

The Kendrick family have been making world-famous dolls for over 200 years. But their dolls aren't coveted for the craftsmanship alone. Each one has a specific emotion laid on it by its creator. A magic that can make you feel bucolic bliss or consuming paranoia at a single touch. Though founded by sisters, now only men may know the secrets of the workshop. Persephone Kendrick longs to break…

Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

· 1 comment · 200 words


The golden mask of a Greek Goddess.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. My brother…

Book Review: Privacy is Power - Carissa Véliz

· 1 comment · 350 words · Viewed ~408 times


Book Cover.

Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your location, your likes, your habits, your relationships, your fears, your medical issues, and sharing it amongst themselves, as well as with governments and a multitude of data vultures. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly…

Book Review: Utopia Five (Panopticon Book 1) - A.E. Currie

· 300 words


Whose world would you kill for?

My name is Lee and I was born on the 8th January 2025 - the day the Panopticon was turned on. In 2053, Earth is a changed place. City states make their own laws and we’re all watched over by the ever present drones. I reckon the new Earth is a utopia. We’re still alive aren’t we? What more do people want? It’s been more than a decade since the Hot Summer. I remember when none of us thought we’…

Book Review: Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain

· 500 words


Painting of a 17th Century woman. She holds a finger to her lips.

It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer's…

Review: Lud-in-the-Mist

· 250 words


A rainbow over a river.

Lud-in-the-Mist - a prosperous country town situated where two rivers meet: the Dawl and the Dapple. The latter, which has its source in the land of Faerie, is a great trial to Lud, which had long rejected anything 'other', preferring to believe only in what is known, what is solid. Nathaniel Chanticleer is a somewhat dreamy, slightly melancholy man, not one for making waves, who is…