2026-04-18 14:00:37
In the previous installment of Tomi Adeyemi's West African inspired magical high fantasy, the story ended with a cliff-hanger that cut short a rolling boil. The last book in the trilogy wraps everything up neatly while adding more complexity — a bold move for an Act 3 novel!
Spoilers ahead
There is some discussion of plot points and mention of previous books in the series. If you want to read them completely blind, probably stop reading this review now!
It was genuinely cathartic to see "myself" as the villain — Scandinavian-coded pirates. Not on a romantic Nordic quest but cutting a path of bloodthirsty slaughter and entitlement. High Fantasy has a nasty habit of heroing Caucasians in a noble quest against "savages" but this flips the script without feeling performative.
Fair warning: I read a review of the previous book that mentioned feeling gut-punched and a level of distress at the parallels to the Atlantic Slave trade. I found the scenes uncomfortable; the descriptions of subjugation and torture can be surprisingly graphic for a "Young Adult" novel.
The story galloped along at a fair old clip. Adeyemi packed a lot into her final book. There was enough, honestly, to split this into two books and give the characters some room to develop.
Accusations of queer-baiting in earlier novels had a resolution; kinda sorta. It wasn't explored in any satisfactory depth; more than a Dumbledore might have been gay, you don't know he wasn't
way though.
The introduction of the vine-weavers (who, given their use of Portuguese, feel Amazonian coded) was a lovely addition to the rich cultural patina but I felt it muddied the waters some.
Some threads were tied up a little too neatly at the end; the happily-ever-afters didn't feel earned for some characters.
The Epilogue was really good. Setting the stage for the world after the novel is always tricky and Adeyemi did it justice. A solid book, rewarding for the reader if a little shallow in places — the curse of an ambitious plot!
2026-04-17 21:07:32
There's a music industry trope about the weak second album
that, it must be said, is a cliche for a reason. Musicians spend their lives to date crafting their debut and eighteen months banging out the follow up. Midlands' chanteuse Holly Humberstone is bucking that trend with brand new release, "Cruel World". Album closer "Beauty Pageant" is haunting in a mature torch song kind of way. Touches on early Jillette Johnson at times — which is a good thing.
High Wycombe headbangers As Everything Unfolds have already survived the "Sophomore Slump" with 2025's "Ultraviolet" and are back with their third long play release.
Dealing with grief (the band lost their drummer in August 2024), "Did you ask to be set free?" sees Charlie Rolfe doing double duty as clean and dirty vocals over that kind of produced metalcore like Polaris and Make Them Suffer. The drums crack staccato reminiscent of Pendulum at times under judicious use of synths pushing the sound towards dark synth pop as the distorted guitars drop in the mix for a more polished, accessible sound.
Not a huge departure from their earlier material but a solid entry in the catalogue.
There are few things in life I love more than seeing the word vampire in its most pretentious spelling! Kiwi swamp witch Kiki Rockwell doesn't disappoint with "Vampyr".
The new single twinkles along on a high register piano melody underpinned with rough strings and Rockwell's melancholy contralto husking its way breathily through the middle flirting with a German language middle eight on the way.
As a mediocre bassist who appreciates watching experts in their field do their thing, I watch Davie504 over on the YouTube. He posted a video on the bassline that broke the internet
which led me to Angine de Poitrine.
Micro-tonal mathrock from another galaxy. Extremely technical playing and the layers of sound are incredible for a duo. The use of loops and micro-tonal notes (the notes in between the notes) –on a double-necked guitar/bass hybrid that I've never seen before– creates a sonic wall that is equally Primus and 65daysofstatic.
All this madness is held together by reliable drumming that keeps the whole shebang from straying into noodle-y wigging-out jazz and firmly in the alt-rock camp. "Sarniezz" is a particular delight.
2026-04-17 03:31:12
I've been struggling with setting up an AI Agent for a client. I mentioned it in my recent weeknotes and suggested it's because I'm used to a specific type of computer and LLMs don't marry with my mental model.
Then I thought, the fuck am I blaming myself for?
I feel non-technical people get along with LLMs better than tech workers because, to them, the computer has always done magic stuff they don't understand. They just treat it like a person and deal with the "hallucinations" because humans are fallible.
There are so many ways an LLM can provide an incorrect answer; the most common being "any answer is higher scoring than zero in the probabilistic sense".
But LLMs can fail because of context collapse where they "forget" what happened earlier in the conversation. Or because of ontological misattributions; where they mistake one thing for another. Or because of ambiguous instructions where it is faced with two conflicting instructions and descends into gibberish — if one of those instructions is in the LLMs system prompt, the user may never be able to debug the issue.
With a human, forgetfulness and misunderstanding and confusion are all tolerated, in many cases expected, and we course-correct accordingly. But we've spent years and dollars ensuring computers don't forget and, if they get confused, they tell us they are confused and need correcting, and they always tell us that 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3 (unless it's JavaScript).
So, yeah, if you've got years of experience and are struggling, chances are it's not you, it's a pseudo-computer silently failing in a way that's impossible to debug.
That's the future.
2026-04-13 01:55:40
This week has gone so quickly!
Forget-me-nots are carpeting the wood and the desire paths are lined with yellow tulips and daffodils. An angry blackbird suggests I fuck off.
A tree fell in the woods, bright down by Storm Dave. I was not there. I did not hear it.
I've been struggling at work seeing up one of those AI agents for a client workshop.
I've spent my life and career dealing with deterministic computers so my mental model is useless for debugging probabilistic environments — very frustrating and helped, I might add, by it being a Microsoft product and, therefore, dogshit UX.
I feel like this is why so many experienced programmers struggle and non-tech people don't; to people who don't understand computers, AI is just another flavour of magic.
I learned that, when it comes to cheese, English and German are closer to Latin than Italian is.
2026-04-10 17:24:23
I managed to return my wife's favour after she introduced me to Kill Karl a couple of weeks back by introducing her to The Scratch. A dark indie band from Ireland that blends traditional Irish music with heavy metal in a way that sounds quite a bit like Tool but also Iron Maiden, Cave In, and The Mary Wallopers. Atmospheric 7-minuter, "Trom I (The Harrowing Sun)" is the most Tool but "Cheeky Bastard" absolutely fucken slaps. Get it on and turn the volume up!
Inhabiting a very appealing space between Editors and Echo & The Bunnymen, lowercase-letter-haters MELTS bring a touch of Scouse-like arrogance to their brand of Irish indie. Nothing traditional about it. Lovely stuff. Check out "Maelstrom" for a taster.
On the bloody unhinged end of the spectrum we find Pretty Happy. I wholeheartedly recommend "Husband" as your introduction. Incredible lyrics, Mclusky-esque music.
About as far from Pretty Happy as you can get and still be "Irish indie" (have you clocked the theme yet?) would be Cliffords. Female-frontend acoustic indie-folk that smells of the sea breeze coming over the cliffs, a hint of gorse, and the distant call of gulls — all captured in three-and-a-half minutes on "Dungarvan Bay", fair play.
2026-04-05 21:08:07
The clocks did that thing they do each Spring but I didn't really notice. The wall clock in the bedroom had needed a new battery for about a week, my phone updated automatically, weirdly my wristwatch died at 00:55, and the clock on the oven hasn't worked for months since a powercut reset it to midday and I couldn't be bothered fixing it.
⌚ Watch battery replaced by the lovely guy in the market. £8 and five minutes; long enough to buy pastries from the deli across the aisle. I really enjoying shopping locally when I can. The market is my kind of vibe!
Came across the photorealistic portraits of Anne-Christine Roda and I am always amazed at the incredible talent and dedication of humans. There will always be a need for this in the world. "la jeune fille au châle" ("the girl in a shawl", if my high school French holds up) is phenomenal; I honestly thought it was a photo until I read the description.
Storm Dave (The Irish Met are really putting us to shame with their storm names (Apologies to all Daves everywhere (from a Tom) is making me glad we're getting the leaky window seals repaired soon!
I checked the BBC and we're technically outside the yellow warning zone. That means it's much worse than this elsewhere. I hope everyone is fine!!
There's a trio of juvenile crows playing in the wind. Hovering and dive-bombing each other around the church spire they clearly live in. Excited and distinctive "caw" call carrying across the graveyard.
That was before the Skulls threw us onto their ships.
Before they stripped us of all we had.
Before they dragged me away from those I loved, held me down, and shaved my head.
Before I looked into the eyes of my abductors and could only see the blood runes carved into their masks.
I think of all the maji who were stolen from their lands.
Tomi Adeyemi, "Children of Anguish and Anarchy"