octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Likeable read, and I enjoyed the focus on maps (I seem to be reading a lot of fantasy books about maps recently, quite by chance, and they've all been pretty good) and the general idea of the lighthouse. The world-building here is excellent, with lots of interesting and creepy details that are all firmly set in the present, by which I mean there's no dragging the narrative down with the various histories of a place/person since the year dot. If I'm perfectly honest, I found the world more interesting than the characters. Valen's a decent enough protagonist but there is, especially in the first half, a lot of whining and abortive running away and that gets a wee bit repetitive though he does improve in the second half, and I don't care remotely about his substance abuse issues.

Flesh and Spirit ends on a cliffhanger, and I'm planning to read the concluding volume soon so it'll be interesting to see if my theories pan out. I've got a good idea, I think, who the lost prince is and what the stolen gift is (the last, at least, seems plainly obvious) but it's not like I haven't been wrong before.

Painfully honest and quietly brutal memoir of a black woman who can "pass" as white, and the compromises she has to choose to make (or not make) pretty much every second of the day. It's exhausting to read, I can't fathom having to live it. The quiet, permeating horror of life in the suburbs, the only black family and always different, as the neighbours are friendly to Derricotte on the one hand and on the other trot off to the club that excludes her because of her race... it's excruciating. That's the two main impressions I get from this book, really. Permeation and exhaustion - or more accurately the realisation of both, because these are compromises and excruciations that I myself will never have to face, and because of that never fully recognised in others.

I'm not even sure that I still do recognise it, at least not fully but this book brought me closer to adequate realisation. It's really powerful stuff - a hard read, sometimes, but a necessary one I think.

My great sense while reading this is that with a couple more drafts it might have been extraordinary. The idea is fantastic - that there's a maze of light that is somehow a shadow and image of a true maze that exists elsewhere, and that one can find self-knowledge in it - but it's not helped by the continually wavering tone. It has the feel, very much, of a cut-price The Dark Is Rising (one of my favourites) but TDIR is plainly a children's book that can be read with pleasure by adults, whereas The Light Maze can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it's a kids' book starring 12 year old Harriet or an adult fantasy novel starring 20 year old Kit. Harriet is the more interesting character - definite, childish, brutal, yet capable of real imagination - but Kit more and more takes over. There's also a very thinly drawn boy, Barney, who seems to exist to spout hazy spiritual bits of speech, and a more cipher-like character is hard to find.

Also rather deeply irritating is that Harriet's dad has been stuck in the light maze for two years, while his wife and child are left to cope with his sudden and unexplained abandonment. Then he comes back, and there's no real emotional fallout. Sally, the mother, is pretty much hand-waved away out of the text - Harriet refers to her as stupid and weak-minded because she doesn't receive her husband's return and story of the maze with perfect equanimity and immediate belief, and it's all really quite unpleasant. As is the father, Tom, who appears to show no remorse or care as to what his wife has gone through. It's a remarkably childish and silly choice by the text, a choice which may barely be acceptable in a rather thoughtless children's book but is absolutely out of place in the more adult fantasy that the book has, by that point, become.

In short: wasted potential here I think, which is slightly disappointing because the idea was there. It's just the execution that's so off.

Very well-written collaboration on a very English apocalypse, wherein a bunch of kids and a bunch of wittery adults and a couple of disaffected supernatural entities find a way to muddle through the end of days. It's funny and clever - Pestilence being replaced by Pollution as a Horseman of the Apocalypse after the advent of antibiotics made me laugh and wince at the same time, because of course we have, so of course it did. But the best parts for me were the bits with the children, who have a pre-teen gang complete with hellhound and an obstreperous desire to argue with each other about the best way to fill up a summer afternoon.

While I've read some of Gaiman I'm very familiar with Pratchett, and his humanising influence, his sense of goodness and of the ridiculous, comes through loud and clear. (It was no surprise, reading the interviews at the end of this edition, that he was mostly responsible for the kid-sections. Not just the dialogue, but the idea of shape affecting thought re the hellhound, otherwise known as Dog.)

This is my last read of 2017. Let's hope it's a good omen for the next year - reading and otherwise!

I have to admit it took me a while to get into this story of three kids transported to a magic land, but by the end I was enthralled. It's not really a children's book, and the religious roots are quite clear. Atheist as I am, that doesn't really bother me - it's just another mythological tradition - for legend and myth are the lifeblood of this story, running close under the surface. In many ways it reminds me a little of Narnia (especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) but there's no denying that Chant's work is far kinder, subtler, and more intelligent than Lewis' - more affecting as well. That's not a knock against Lewis, as I'm extremely fond of Narnia, but the two worlds are really written on two very different moral levels.

I'm going to have to find myself a copy.

Deeply soporific. The protagonist, a convinced invalid suffering primarily from terminal whininess, monologues his way through 150 odd pages. It felt longer. I was inescapably reminded of Lolita - not due to the subject matter (they could not be more different there) but because of the same deadening homogeneity of tone. It's so absolutely, tiresomely consistent - a mosquito-drone of a text - that it's hard to stay awake long enough to credit the effect of the portrait. And credit is due: as with Nabokov, Bernhard's unpleasant protagonist is very, very finely drawn. It's unmistakeably an intelligent and skilful piece of writing and I can admire it for that even though the overall effect, for me, is one of general tedium.

This isn't the best of Ball's Footroot Flats cartoons, but it's still a fun and likeable read. Dog is as simultaneously kind and cowardly as he ever is, and there's a heavy focus in this collection on the gleefully violent Horse, who I always enjoy - Horse the cat has been my favourite Flats character since forever. As always, though, the charm of the Dog and his friends lies in the subject and setting: rural New Zealand farm life, where the objects of importance are sheep, cows, tree-planting (the Dog is an inveterate conservationist), and trying to get one over on pampered little Prince Charles, Aunt Dolly's useless corgi.

(Re)read as part of Book Riot's 2018 Read Harder challenge: a comic that isn't published by Marvel, DC, or Image.

Eat the custard, Dog. You'll like it.

Dystopian power fantasy with bugs. The bugs are the best part - creepy disease bearing ticks that bite and breed inside flesh, that carry an enormous risk of fatality. They're genuinely creepy and gross, and every time they come centre stage the book picks right up. Less successful, for me, were the characters. Nearly all of whom were unpleasant, and at least one of whom - Wes - seems to me to be shot in quirky soft focus, almost. (It's very clear who the favourite character was!) Now unpleasant characters can be successful and entertaining, but you've got to commit to the unpleasantness - not make irredeemable villains, but not gloss anything over either, and there's a bit too much gloss here undermining what is fundamentally a story of the bad places entitlement can take you.

In short: interesting premise, adequately executed, but there was a sharp-edged story waiting to be told hidden in there I think.

Extremely entertaining account of the life of Queen Victoria. It is perhaps somewhat superficial in its treatment - though really, she lived for over 80 years and reigned for over 60, so a 300 page bio is barely enough for the highlights - but that is compensated for by the tone, which is the shining strength of this text. All I can say is that Strachey must have been an inveterate, gleeful old gossip! Would have loved to have gone to a dinner party with him. His writing is informal and funny and while there's a clear warmth for his subject he's not above putting the side-eye to Victoria and her many hangers-on.

We are most certainly amused.

Dark Swedish examination of family disappearance and the systematic brutalisation of women. I'd honestly rate it 4 stars if I didn't hate the ending as much as I do. I really, really dislike that it's all covered up - basically, for all its emphasis on misogynistic violence, with all the sad little real life statistics that open each section, all the dead women in this text are props. They get no justice, their families are left in limbo, and the good guys - such as they are - are fully complicit in their erasure. The problem is, by the end, they're not good guys. Blomkvist is right. He is corrupt. Pretty much every fucking person in this is complicit in the cover-up of mass rape and murder and I end not liking any of them. Blomkvist, Henrik, Harriet... I hate them all.

Look, this is still a well-written mystery that segues into thriller. I liked a great deal about it that wasn't that shitty ending. Also, the title seems a little misleading. Lisbeth is far and away the most interesting character, but it's Mikael that gets three-quarters of the page time. If only he choked on it.