D.K. Powell (Author of The Pukur)

D.K. Powell wrote a new blog post Film Review: 28 Years Later “…For any zombie fan, it’s a must….” I am not a huge fan of the zombie-apocalypse kind of movies. I don’t mind them, but this particular subgenre of h Read more of this blog post »
Feb 13, 2026 03:39AM · like
D.K. Powell rated a book did not like it The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1) by L. Frank Baum	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
Recently, I've been reviewing Christmas shows at various theatres. At Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, The Wizard of Oz was their seasonal production last Christmas. It was a very interesting attempt to reinvent the story and make a new kind of musica ...more
Jan 25, 2026 08:52AM · like · see review
D.K. Powell has read The Gladiators from Capua (The Roman Mysteries, #8) by Caroline Lawrence (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
Nov 28, 2025 05:50AM · like
D.K. Powell has read The Colossus of Rhodes (Roman Mysteries, #9) by Caroline Lawrence (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
Nov 28, 2025 03:33AM · like
D.K. Powell has read The Assassins of Rome (Roman Mysteries, #4) by Caroline Lawrence (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
Nov 28, 2025 01:23AM · like
D.K. Powell rated a book really liked it The Beggar of Volubilis (The Roman Mysteries, #14) by Caroline Lawrence (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
After the super story that was book XIII, it was going to be a hard act to follow for Caroline Lawrence. She doesn't quite manage it with this outing but then there's a sense that this may be intentional. We're just three books away from the last in ...more
Apr 12, 2025 04:20AM · 2 likes · like · see review
D.K. Powell rated a book liked it End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin	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
End Times is far from a perfect work, but it is a wonderful resource of interesting theories that beg to be talked about. Turchin lays out his theory, ostensibly predictive, of 'cliodynamics' that deals with the dynamics of 'end times' of political st ...more
Mar 01, 2025 06:21AM · 2 likes · like · see review
D.K. Powell rated a book it was amazing The Slave-girl from Jerusalem (The Roman Mysteries, #13) by Caroline Lawrence (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
We're back with our old friends, the child detectives, and many of their companions. This time we've got a classic story: murder victims and a slave-girl who's in the frame for the crime. Along the way, Lawrence gives us a whole stack of information a ...more
Feb 23, 2025 02:30AM · 1 like · like · see review
D.K. Powell rated a book it was amazing The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3) by Richard Osman	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
If you've read my previous reviews of The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice then it will come as no surprise that I'm going to say I loved this third instalment of this little gang of retired would-be detectives and their friends. Richar ...more
Jan 29, 2025 04:24AM · 1 like · like · see review
D.K. Powell rated a book really liked it The Midnight Library (The Midnight World, #1) by Matt Haig (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
It's been a while since I read a book by Matt Haig. The last one I reviewed was The Humans and I ended up giving quite a favourable review. This very much surprised me because I think my attitudes towards the author have changed since writing about th ...more
Jan 26, 2025 02:24AM · 1 like · like · see review

D.K. Powell wrote a new blog post

Film Review: 28 Years Later

“…For any zombie fan, it’s a must….” I am not a huge fan of the zombie-apocalypse kind of movies. I don’t mind them, but this particular subgenre of h Read more of this blog post »

D.K. Powell rated a book did not like it

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1)
by L. Frank Baum

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Recently, I've been reviewing Christmas shows at various theatres. At Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, The Wizard of Oz was their seasonal production last Christmas. It was a very interesting attempt to reinvent the story and make a new kind of musica ...more

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The Gladiators from Capua by Caroline Lawrence

The Gladiators from Capua (The Roman Mysteries, #8)
by Caroline Lawrence (Goodreads Author)

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The Colossus of Rhodes by Caroline Lawrence

The Colossus of Rhodes (Roman Mysteries, #9)
by Caroline Lawrence (Goodreads Author)

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The Assassins of Rome by Caroline Lawrence

The Assassins of Rome (Roman Mysteries, #4)
by Caroline Lawrence (Goodreads Author)

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The Beggar of Volubilis by Caroline Lawrence

The Beggar of Volubilis (The Roman Mysteries, #14)
by Caroline Lawrence (Goodreads Author)

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After the super story that was book XIII, it was going to be a hard act to follow for Caroline Lawrence. She doesn't quite manage it with this outing but then there's a sense that this may be intentional. We're just three books away from the last in After the super story that was book XIII, it was going to be a hard act to follow for Caroline Lawrence. She doesn't quite manage it with this outing but then there's a sense that this may be intentional. We're just three books away from the last in the series after this and at the moment I don't know how much the author intended that to be the case.

Was she like J K Rowling who had the ending planned all along and knew Harry Potter would always be seven books? Or did Lawrence just get to seventeen and decide the series had run its course? With my usual rule of finding out as little as possible about authors and books before I finish their books, I won't know until I get to the end of the final one, but my suspicions are brewing.

Why is this important? Because I feel this book is a 'calm before the storm' thing. Almost nothing happens with driving the larger plots forward. Everyone is still reeling from the tragedy of the last book and Flavia, the central character in this collection of Roman detective stories featuring four children, is still not quite ready for the marriage that's clearly on the horizon. From a plot point of view then, this whole book is effectively a prologue - we're building to some kind of climax.

In terms of the story itself, there's a certain degree of disbelief here. Our four young heroes are sent by the emperor himself to Africa on a dangerous mission to steal a precious gem. The mission itself gets even more dangerous when, soon after landing on the coast of Africa, their boat sets sail without them and they have to trek across the desert to get to their final destination. Even allowing for the fact that 'kids' of those days were more like young adults of today, this is an absurd mission. Titus would surely have better ways to obtain a much-wanted jewel. Then there's the fact that the parents of Flavia and Jonathan never seem to know where they are or what dangerous scrapes they get into.

What's more, this is the homeland of Nubia, the black slave girl Flavia saved and befriended in book I. I expected more of a story about her but it seems, in this world, Nubia is just as lost as the rest of her friends. I felt this should have been the ideal vehicle to bring her story to completion as we do need to start wrapping up the mysteries surrounding these kids.

All these criticisms being made, this is still Caroline Lawrence doing what she does and doing it well. As usual, you can't help but learn lots about the customs and culture of Roman society circa AD 80. Remembering this is YA/children's literature, you can suspend belief long enough to enjoy the ride. And perhaps, given the heartbreak and turmoil of the previous book, what we needed was a damned good yarn that stretches things a little bit. In a sense, this book will be judged by what comes next as we reach the end trio of books where so many strands need to be drawn in and sewn up properly together. ...more

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End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
by Peter Turchin

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End Times is far from a perfect work, but it is a wonderful resource of interesting theories that beg to be talked about.

Turchin lays out his theory, ostensibly predictive, of 'cliodynamics' that deals with the dynamics of 'end times' of political st ...more

D.K. Powell rated a book it was amazing

The Slave-girl from Jerusalem by Caroline Lawrence

The Slave-girl from Jerusalem (The Roman Mysteries, #13)
by Caroline Lawrence (Goodreads Author)

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We're back with our old friends, the child detectives, and many of their companions. This time we've got a classic story: murder victims and a slave-girl who's in the frame for the crime.

Along the way, Lawrence gives us a whole stack of information a We're back with our old friends, the child detectives, and many of their companions. This time we've got a classic story: murder victims and a slave-girl who's in the frame for the crime.

Along the way, Lawrence gives us a whole stack of information about life in Rome 'through the back door', as it were. In my book, that's the best way to teach children history. Let it flow naturally. In this story, we learn about the Roman justice system, how to make speeches, the laws governing freeing slaves, making wills and the horrific story of the massacre at Masada - none of which you'd manage to get a class of kids to have the least bit interest in if you simply tried to drum it into their heads.

But this novel is anything but boring. Solving the mystery lies in learning about these facts and the four detectives have to overcome what seems to us as peculiarities of laws and customs that hinder them from saving their slave-girl friend.

Along the way, as usual, Lawrence continues to build on longer threads such as the burgeoning romance between Flavia (the lead protagonist) and 'Floppy' Flaccus who have not yet admitted their feelings even to themselves as yet, let alone each other. The pair are getting ever closer to the inevitable.

Of course, if you've read at least a few of the previous books, you may well be guessing that the children (and they are pre-teens though they behave more like older teenagers - everything happened at younger ages in those times) will eventually solve the mystery and save their friend from death by crucifixion. But beware...

I was on a train back from a meeting down in London when I finished this novel and I did not see the ending coming. I wish I had so it would have saved me the embarrassment of weeping like a baby on a crowded train. If you are a fan of the books then this story is going to hit hard, really hard. It is a stroke of genius on the author's part and she weaves in the mystical aspects of the previous books that I have regularly commented on. This is where it all starts to come together.

This also means that these stories, as we enter the final quarter of the seventeen-book series, have a new impetus, fresh problems to deal with. I have little fear now that the books will go stale as we head towards the end.

The Slave-girl from Jerusalem is an excellent book albeit with the caveats that you need to have read some of the previous books in the series to know the characters well and you need to be prepared for the that fact that not everything ends well. I was totally unprepared for the ending. As someone who invests heavily in characters (when well written) there's a heaviness in my heart today that is crushing. ...more

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The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)
by Richard Osman

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If you've read my previous reviews of The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice then it will come as no surprise that I'm going to say I loved this third instalment of this little gang of retired would-be detectives and their friends.

Richar If you've read my previous reviews of The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice then it will come as no surprise that I'm going to say I loved this third instalment of this little gang of retired would-be detectives and their friends.

Richard Osman, in interviews about these books, comes across as just a lovely guy. He's the kind of fellow I would love to meet in a pub, buy him a drink and have a good old chinwag about stuff. His characters come across exactly like this. It's quite a feat to do because 'nice' characters can often just all come out as carbon copies of the same idea with slight variations. Osman's characters are distinctly different to each other and each has their own very different back story and weaknesses. They're all adorable - even the killers!

The first novel was, like all firsts, something of a stand-alone that had a complete beginning, middle and end. The subsequent books are increasingly less tidy as Osman develops running threads and takes us down avenues we're clearly going to visit again. For instance, in this third book, we're not done with the 'bad guy' from the previous book albeit that person is safely behind bars. Likewise, love relationships continue to blossom though poor Joyce - arguably the randiest of the four - still hasn't got a man for herself.

But perhaps what I like most about this series is the way Osman brings in new characters and, unless they're bumped off or otherwise dealt with, they join this increasingly extended family of characters. You want them to as well. These new characters 'fit'.

The stories rely increasingly on Elizabeth's spy past, which does make sense, otherwise why would four OAPs be finding themselves embroiled in dead bodies again and again? This time, while trying to solve a 'cold case' of a murdered journalist, Elizabeth finds herself, her husband, and her best friend Joyce in trouble over their shenanigans from the previous book. A very dangerous criminal is going to kill at least one of them unless Elizabeth murders a former KGB agent. How does she get out of this one?

You can probably guess that she will, though I doubt you'll have any clue how nor what happens along the way. All I will say is that the journey will be joyful and leave you feeling good about life and people in general. That's Osman's gift: his stories are uplifting, charming and delight both the heart and and the mind.

You can probably guess that I'm going to get on with the fourth in the series very soon. I'm partially holding back because, at the time of writing, there's only four books in the series - so the next will be the last one. How will I manage without my little foursome? Thankfully, I see that a fifth book, untitled at present, is due out later this year. Phew!

And then there's the film that is due out this year too. I already know that it will be utterly brilliant. Not only is it stuffed full of superb actors but the casting is inspired too. Helen Mirren as Elizabeth is perfect, as is Ben Kingsley as psychiatrist Ibrahim. Celia Imrie as the deliciously naughty Joyce and Pierce Brosnan as the irascible Ron are also super casting choices. I'm already picturing these actors as the characters when reading the books.

The Bullet that Missed isn't all jollies and fun though. There's some poignant moments and at least one running storyline that is continuing further to an end that none of us want to see but really is inevitable. While Osman has done a remarkable job of showing us that old people in a retirement village are still human beings, worthy of love and respect, they are still old. There is an increasing sense in the books of these characters battling against the odds to stay truly alive. Of course, for now, they are winning that battle, but for how long is not at all certain.

If you've not read the previous books in this series do not start here. Not only will you not have a clue what is going on, it would be disrespectful to the author's work and to the characters themselves who deserve to be introduced properly rather than have you rudely listen in on the middle of their conversations. Do the decent thing and buy the first book. Trust me, you'll devour it and make your way to this third novel, via book two, in no time at all and you'll thank me for it.

For anyone else who has read the previous two and wondering if this next one can be as good or is it best to stop while the going is good - again, trust me, you will want to read this book. All fans of this gang will want to read this book. As you'll no doubt already understand, the plot barely matters any longer (though it is excellent, of course); it is merely a vehicle for continuing our deepening relationships with these characters. Right now, I don't want that to end. ...more

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The Midnight Library (The Midnight World, #1)
by Matt Haig (Goodreads Author)

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It's been a while since I read a book by Matt Haig. The last one I reviewed was The Humans and I ended up giving quite a favourable review.

This very much surprised me because I think my attitudes towards the author have changed since writing about th It's been a while since I read a book by Matt Haig. The last one I reviewed was The Humans and I ended up giving quite a favourable review.

This very much surprised me because I think my attitudes towards the author have changed since writing about that novel. I've become more critical of his social media posting, feeling he just drones on about his depression, how far he's come since the days of being suicidal and how much he struggles today. Get a grip, I often feel now.

But a lot of me is very much suspecting this is saying much more about me than it is about Matt Haig. My father's inability to show deep emotion or admit weakness has grown into me as I get older. I look in the mirror these days and see my father staring back. Don't get me wrong - he was a good man with many wonderful traits that I am proud to have inherited in part - but he was very much Victorian values, stiff upper lip kind of a man. I didn't used to be like that but an awful lot of trauma has happened in the last eleven years and now I'm much more reserved.

Which is a very long, roundabout kind of way of saying that I wanted to hate The Midnight Library because of my issues, not Haig's.

It felt like a really trite story. A woman, Nora Seed, has made a complete mess of her life - she can't even keep her cat alive, she's that bad - and has decided to end it all. In doing so, she ends up in 'the Midnight Library' containing all the books of all her potential lives. She can try them all out until she finds a life she does want to live. I could see what's coming and, to be fair, I was largely right. But at the beginning I thought this was going to be full of gratuitous feel-good platitudes that would be cringe-worthy.

Of course, I was wrong.

I may be begrudging, but Matt Haig actually is a really good writer. His characters are authentic; they're real. Everything is very believable - very British, indeed. I can see exactly why this book has been so successful and loved by a lot of people. The book resonates.

It hits my most important marker for fiction: do I care what happens next to the character(s) after the book is closed for the last time? The answer is: yes, absolutely. I want a sequel to see Nora's life after this book. That won't happen, of course, but I want it and I've enjoyed imagining her life now since finishing the book. That's as high an accolade as I can give really, such as it is.

While the end is inevitable, the journeys Nora takes are fascinating as she imagines every conceivable version of who she might have become. As she does this, her regrets about her 'root' life disappear. It turns out she isn't the one responsible for the woes of others and some 'good decisions' actually would have had terrible ramifications. For a while, this looks like it makes things even worse for Nora - there's no such thing as a perfect life - but Haig is able to turn this around in a way that naturally transitions so you don't notice it coming.

The book is very readable. While the opening chapters are a bit bleak, Haig writes with charm and humour throughout. Nora's 'black dog' lifts over time and the book quickly becomes quite uplifting without having to try hard or spell it out in heavy-handed clichés.

Given my above bias against the author and this book, I feel it was quite a good one for me to read at this point in my life where things are 'a little difficult', as the British might say. It's not going to change my life, nor make me see things differently, but I do feel the story was a friend along the way, quietly holding my hand for a while. I will miss Nora, but I'm grateful to Matt Haig for introducing her to me. I recommend you meet her too. ...more

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	The Pukur it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 10 ratings — 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
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