octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

My least favourite of the three, but still an enjoyable read. Its real strength is in the ending, I think, which isn't really happy by any stretch of the imagination but is still all too believable. I'm always left slightly saddened, however, by the wrong boy dying. The narrator, Will, can be so sulky and rash (albeit in a normal adolescent way) that one can't help but think the three boys around him are much better suited for life in the new world. Funnily, my strongest memory of reading this series as a child was the feeling of utter betrayal regarding Henry. (Clearly I hadn't read a lot of characters who ended up as he did then...)

One of my absolute favourites - primarily for the ending, which I consistently find to be a real tearjerker. It's the three handmaidens that get to me the most, poor pitiful things that they are.

I remember when I first read this book, years ago now, I spent a lot of time laughing at it. And fair's fair: it's a funny book. But the more I read it the more I appreciate the essential sadness of the story, and of pretty much all the characters. It's a comedy that ends well, but it's the unhappiness that gives it heart I think.

Chilling collection of essays on the societal hatred of women, inspired by the author's journalistic experience on the Yorkshire Ripper case. Some of the examples in here are truly appalling, and while I like to think there's been improvement in some areas - surely judges could not get away with some of those rulings today! - in others it's the same old, same old.

Necessary reading, I think, but it does tend to chip away at one's faith in humanity. Not that I had so much of that to begin with, but still.

A nice little tale, but that's where it ends for me. I don't find it has the same attraction as other of Tolkien's works, though in fairness some of the images - as always with this author - are lovely. It's just that fairy tales are often a bit sketched in and I was never charmed enough here to fill in the blanks. I have to say I found the extra material (the genesis and analysis of the story) more interesting than the story itself.

A chatty if not particularly incisive look at the first three and a half seasons of The X-Files. It can be a little repetitive (yes, you felt the second season went off formula, I get it already). Still, it's amusing in parts - most often when the reviewers are disagreeing between themselves, but sometimes, blackly, when I'm disagreeing with them. I know everyone has different tastes, but it's hard for me not to side-eye reviewers who praise the excruciatingly dull "Space"(a "fine episode" my eye) or the painfully embarrassing and over-melodramatic "The Field Where I Died" ("Utterly impressive", HA!).

Granny Weatherwax is possibly my favourite Discworld character. The witches books are certainly my favourite of the series in general, but I tend to think of Nanny Ogg and Magrat as being the back-up singers of witching in the Ramtops, if you get my drift. In Lords and Ladies they share the spotlight, and it's hugely entertaining. Magrat especially benefits from her rise to queenship, and I really enjoyed the presentation of her as a research witch; it's something I would have liked to have seen more of.

The end battle between Granny and the Queen isn't quite as strong as the one in the previous book, where Granny took on Mrs Gogol and Lily, but you can't have everything, and this is still a book I'm happy to reread over and over.

A diverse and inventive collection, split into four parts. Overall I enjoyed the first part the most - it's got this prophetic, pre-apocalyptic vibe as it sets down reminders for future civilisations. By far my favourite poem, however, was "Tiger Story" of part three, wherein a tiger catches prey and eats some of it before being injured by another tiger who wants the food. The wounded tiger is then rescued and healed before being let out into the wild again. It's a fantastic poem, very evocative. I've read it several times already, and I'm sure I'll be going back to it in the future.

An enjoyable read, but after the absolute brilliance of Azkaban I found it to be something of a letdown, both on reread now and back when it came out. Part of that is that Goblet is the point in the Harry Potter series where it starts to suffer badly from bloat. The book is enormous, and the end is one giant infodump. First Voldemort, then Crouch-Moody, then Crouch-Barty... it's speechifying on and on and on.

The strange thing about it is that the most touching moments of the book comes in tiny fragments. The bit on Neville's parents, for instance, is only a few paragraphs long but it's punchy and tragic and is worth its weight in gold in character-building, which shows that the book doesn't need to outweigh a brick to be effective (again: see POA). Yet there it is: the brick. The bloat. And I don't recall it tightening back up from here on out.

Metaphor backed up by science. An imaginative look at the Earth as a single system, notable for its interdisciplinary outlook. I'm not entirely sure that I'm convinced, but I'm certainly interested enough to look further!

I rather thought I'd like this more. I mean I did like it well enough, but I couldn't warm to the main character and I don't really care what happens to him. (Edit: you know, thinking back, does he have a sense of humour at all? Even a spark? I don't recall. That could be it. Yet Ambrosius didn't have much of one either and I liked him. I did get a well-defined sense of personality from Ambrosius, though, whereas Merlin just seems... blank.)

Apart from Ambrosius, the only real sparks of interest I had, character-wise, were for Merlin's mother and Ygraine - and their presence was brief on both counts, which was irritating considering the book meandered on endlessly about nearly everything else. (It's not like there were any other female characters to spend time with instead. I do recall Merlin patronisingly thinking well of Ygraine in that he'd never talked to a woman as if she were a man (i.e. thinking person) before. Perhaps if he'd talked to any women at all his horizons would be broadened; as it is I'm rooting for Niniane and she hasn't even arrived yet).

Rather lengthy for what it was; it could have lost some flab I reckon. T.H. White this is not, but if it's a rainy day and you've nothing better to do to pass the time it could be a lot worse.