octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Orange marmalade, Cheshire cats, the pig and pepper (wow! wow! wow!), painted roses, hedgehog croquet balls, flamingos and mustard both bite, mock turtles, Drink Me, lizard in the chimney, serpent-neck, the fifth bend, thimbles, swimming in salt tears, the white rabbit, Off With Their Heads!, toadstools, tea parties, and my absolute favourite: the treacle mine (I dare say there may be one).

This is so full of ridiculous inventiveness that it has justly been famous for generations. All the stars, and extra kudos for this version's fantastic creepy art by Camille Rose Garcia.

Not one of Herbert's better efforts I think. It's basically schlock horror, substituting scares for over the top violence and BDSM on every other page. Nearly every character is deeply unpleasant, and while I realise the text is themed around corruption and the various levels of evil, there are other horror narratives (e.g. The Exorcist) that are also primarily concerned with corruption and don't immediately drop to the lowest common denominator to get there. Focusing so much on each character's dark side makes them come across as bizarrely one-dimensional ciphers. (The only female character, Cora, is one of the least convincing women I think I've come across in fiction, ever.)

It does get an extra point for the interesting use of Sumerian myth-history, which sets it a little apart from other horror of this sort, but make no mistake: this is no Moon.

3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. Surprisingly thoughtful and utterly bleak gothic horror, with an appeal that rests largely on its finely drawn characters. I don't care at all for Lestat, I have to say, and Louis can become a little tedious with his endless and determined melancholy, but little Claudia is one of the great horror creations. She's both pathetic and terrifying, and the great sprawling tragedy of her undeath is really the linchpin that holds this novel together. It's worth reading just for that.

Enjoyable fantasy novel for kids, in which a young girl called Molly decides she'd rather take on a dilapidated castle and assorted minions than her good twin Sarah. (I actually found Sarah quite entertaining in the few moments we had with her. Like a Disney Princess with the dial turned all the way up, but it was her habit of declamation that made me laugh. Would have liked to see more of her.) The story itself is fairly straightforward, not a lot of surprises and Eudaimonia's trick is apparent from the get go, but "charming" really is the accurate word here.

There is a really fantastic idea at the centre of this YA fantasy novel. Actually, there's two of them. The first is interesting enough, and it's that the world has split apart into different eras, so that each geographic zone is set somewhere in the past, present, or future, and is essentially temporally untethered to the others. The second - and the idea that fascinated me and really held my interest - was the idea of different varieties of maps made to navigate this world: weather maps, construction maps, memory maps, all made with different materials (glass, metal, onions...) and requiring different methods of reading.

Against the level of interest this generated in me the plot was almost unnecessary - there's a special map, and young Sophie goes looking for it. I didn't care about the plot so much, and the one real irritation of the book (other than the total lack of New Zealand in the frontispiece maps) was that the story was structured as a seemingly never-ending series of chase scenes. That got a little tiresome, but still worth slogging through for those fantastic maps.

Enjoyable entry in the Discworld series, albeit one more reliant on exploiting stereotype than any deeper meaning. But then, the Rincewind books for me are never on the same level as the witches or the City Watch - they're far more concerned with slapstick than with character. I do enjoy the petty squabbling of the wizards, however, and there is in The Last Continent my absolute favourite corny Discworld joke, and it involves a puffin. And the whole sequence with the atheist god of evolution is a high point, if slightly heavy-handed for Pratchett.

Poor old troll. Honestly, though, as well-written as this is, Cohen the Barbarian is on a par with Rincewind for me - amusing enough in a small way, but very far from my favourite Discworld character. This little short is basically his character in a nutshell, but as much as I sympathise with the idea of the adventurous world being lost, I can't get upset about forests cleared out of giant creepy spiders.

Captain Carrot is one of my favourite Discworld characters, sitting comfortably up there with Granny Weatherwax and Vimes, and I can't tell you how much I would have liked this to be a full-length novel. Carrot and his simple, linear thinking is always so entertaining, especially as I'm convinced that underneath he knows precisely what he's doing. Alas, this little story is only a few pages long. Possibly too short for what it is, but still very entertaining.

Not really a book at all, just a short little story of Death and a philosopher. Even when you know the end is coming, however, it's still quite touching - and even more so, when you read it knowing that Death has come for the philosopher, and he found a bit of meaning in that regardless.

I think that this is, hands down, my favourite piece of Discworld writing. It grinds on and slowly on like a horror show, with Weatherwax spite infecting everything around her until onions are tremblingly offered and social order is restored (with Granny on top, naturally). It is an absolutely perfect short story, and encapsulates in one glorious, petty power play everything I love about Granny Weatherwax, the best character in all of Pratchett.

And Nanny Ogg is good too.