octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I've got to admit that, like Digger, I have little truck with prophecies. There's some interesting stuff going on here as Digger meets a deer-faced guide who is a walking warning against herbal medicine, a monastery deserted of everything but ghosts and demons, and a shadow that grows up. The last is both the most and the least interesting of the piece - I feel as if I've read that story (a monster, raised with the kindness of strangers to something more) numerous times before, but it was well-done if not hugely original.

And it's finished, and I was teary-eyed. There's a very Pratchett-like quality to this series, but most especially to this ending. It came out most in Boneclaw Mother, I think, but it's there in Ed as well, and in Murai, and in Digger - in all the characters who did things that were large and small and good, because they could and because they had the choice.

Wonderful ending to a fantastic series.

Oh, that was painful. The real hero of this volume isn't Digger at all, though she's having a rough time of it what with having to swallow liver in a hyena death ritual - and explain herself afterwards to the hag while being dosed with purgatives vile (herbivores are not constructed to digest meat). No, the hero here is Ed. Poor Ed, and I won't comment on why he was exiled as that gets too close to spoilers, but it is gut-wrenching and compromising in so many different ways, and it gives this series an emotional punch that hasn't been there in the previous volumes.

Digger, getting increasingly more sick of shit and increasingly more terrified of the local teenage healer, is pursued by the metal birds of cave-and-chained-god-dom. This is a difficulty. She's also stuck trying to teach a shadow-eating monster basic morality (which it interprets as talking to deer ad nauseum until the neighbourhood hyena population starves) while dealing with vampiric vegetables and troll riding.

Sooner or later she's going to flip entirely, and I've yet to decide who gets taken out with a pickaxe first. I admit to being less enthused by the shadow creature than the rest, so I hope its chirpy ignorance is at the front of the queue. As long as it isn't Ed, the exiled hyena, who I feel badly for.

The story continues. Digger the awesome wombat is sent by the statue of a god she doesn't believe in down creepy skin-infested caves, with a mad and fainting teenager from a cult of suspicious and religious bastards, and down in the caves are metal headed bird monsters and an eviscerated god, with a heart kept alive by minions who don't believe in the engineering power of pulleys and levers.

Totally mad, but it's certainly entertaining.

I am predisposed to love this because wombats are adorable grumpy beasts, and to have one as a militantly atheist mining geologist/engineer is awesome. Digger is minding her own business when a tunnel turns wonky and directs her through mysterious caverns and into the temple of Ganesh. She's far from home and surrounded by weird shit, and I am hugely entertained.

I read and reviewed the six volumes of this series separately, so this is mostly just for my own records. It's a fantastic piece of story-telling: touching and funny and sad, but parts of it were elevated above the rest, I think. Volumes 1-3 got 4 stars each from me, Volume 5 was the low point of the series with 3 stars (though when I say "low point" it is relative - V5 was still an enjoyable read, but it lacked for me a little something when compared to the rest, and a lot of the travelling storyline felt a wee bit filler-like). But Volumes 4 and 6 were spectacular. 5 stars each, and my love for Ed the exiled hyena is undimmed forever. Special mentions also to Boneclaw Mother and to Digger, the heart of the whole thing.

The whole averages out at 4 stars. Well worth reading and highly recommended.

Charming little collection of poetry, often funny but not always, and with a leaping-from-this-to-the-next quality that's very indicative of childhood. Winnie appears briefly but not often, it's more about Christopher Robin though there's random pieces of whimsy here and there on other characters. It's mostly beetle-capturing and fishing and playing pretend in the nursery - as I said, charming, if rather slight, but I suspect the charm lies in the slightness.

I liked this better than Now We Are Six, the poems seemed a bit sharper and a bit more rollicking. Although perhaps that is nostalgia, for in this collection are poems I recognise and loved from when I was a kid. I still get an enormous kick out of James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree and his mum, who probably ran away to the other end of town just to get away from the insufferable little tyrant!

As a whole the collection's not perfect, there's still some too-cutesy stuff in here what with daffodils and water lily fairies and so on, but it's still a classic and (mostly) deservedly so, I think.

I read and reviewed these separately earlier today, so this is basically just for my own records. Rating is averaged from the two volumes - Now We Are Six earned itself 3 stars, while When We Were Very Young got 4. That gives an average of 3.5, rounded up to 4.

Honestly, I think WWWVY is the better collection, although possibly because I have a nostalgic love for a number of the poems in it, including "Halfway Down", "The King's Breakfast", and one of my favourite child poems of all time, that of the bratty James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree in "Disobedience" (or, as I would call it, "Lucky Escape").