octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

A pretty basic novelisation. Maybe it'll come to light as I read further into the series, but I wish the fact that Yoda is quite happy to let Leia wander the galaxy with no training would be addressed. I mean, you've got two kids - just two! - with an enormous Force heritage, and when one's in danger Yoda does his best to dissuade Luke from going to help her. Alright, I can get that he doesn't want both eggs in one basket, but Luke goes anyway, towards the potential smashing of both eggs, and Yoda comments to Ghost Ben that he's not the last hope, and there is another (Leia). Which Ben should already know, and who the two of them should be doing something to preserve instead of this weird dance of sacrifice-your-friends-for-the-greater-good-even-if-one-of-them-is-the-spare-we-need-if-you-go-wrong. I mean, in A New Hope Kenobi sees Leia in trouble and runs to help, but Yoda? Eh. And I love Yoda, but as a strategist he kind of sucks. And yes, I know that a lot of this is complaint in retrospect, but Lucas had the oversight of this book, one presumes, and he could have laid down clues but didn't.

Also, it's kind of off-putting how sleazy Han Solo comes across without Harrison Ford's charm to leaven the already dodgy banter. (And how much more tolerable Luke is when I don't have to look at his haircut.) So, again: eh. The film is a classic. The novelisation is not.

Zippy, enjoyable read, as eight episodes from the original Star Trek are turned into short stories. This volume covers some of the best episodes as well - "Space Seed" and "The City on the Edge of Forever" included.

I was reading, yesterday, the novelisation of The Empire Strikes Back, which I gave two stars. And I was wondering, as I read today, why I find the Blish retellings more entertaining than the Star Wars novelisations. Both are fairly thin, not digging that far below what was onscreen, and I think in the end it comes down to length. Each Blish story runs about 15 pages, representing 40 odd minutes of television programme, whereas the movie retellings are about three times the screen length and about 13 times the page length. It doesn't match up, and it seems that in the absence of depth I have an increased appreciation for pace.

The absolute ridiculousness of Miss Moppet wrapping her head in a duster and sitting primly before the fire never fails to amuse me. Every time I see that illustration I laugh. I'm not sure if that was the effect Beatrix Potter was going for, but I appreciate it nonetheless. The story here is a trifle thin, to be sure, and if that first duster picture didn't exist this would probably be a three star picture book for me. That one illustration single-handedly drags the rating up another star, however.

It's a terrible shame such an enjoyable book has such a hideous cover! Oh well, such is the opportunity to not-judge-a-book-by. I was a bit dubious starting this as faeries aren't really my thing in fantasy, but occasionally (as with Kat Howard's Roses and Rot, which coincidentally also suffers from its cover) I am entirely won over. There's such a fine faerie line - making them inhuman and scary but still believable, still compelling. I think what really helps here is Jack, and his (human) family, who make a good argument for nurture over nature. I love that his mum kept his changeling self, and I love that his adopted brother and father stick by him no matter what. I am, to be honest, far more interested in his living in two worlds bit than I am in Hazel's - while she was my favourite character and I liked her a lot, the lost memory day-Hazel vs. night-Hazel didn't do much for me, and the return of her memory was somewhat unconvincing in that it seemed to have no effect on her personality and so on. But that doesn't take away from the fun, creepy imagery that's scattered all through The Darkest Part of the Forest and which is actually the best part of it: the horned prince in his glass coffin, Ben with his broken fingers, the tree-like Sorrow, the kids with leaf and dirt stuffed mouths repeating that creepy little lament...

The worst of the series thus far, which is disappointing given that said series began so strongly with Jackaroo. Look, Voigt's writing is as good as ever here: she's talented at putting words together and I enjoy her style, and in all honesty it has to be said that this book ended very strongly. Not strongly enough, however, to counteract the protagonist, who was horribly off-putting - something not helped by the fact that the text was determined to batter me over the head with his apparent wonderfulness. While he had a few good points, they were consistently overshadowed: Oriel is one of those personalities that counts loyalty as a good... but only when directed towards other men. Every women he meets he fucks over, willingly and emotionlessly, and I seethed through most of the book, hoping beyond hope that someone would kill this unpleasant little prick in order to put him out of my misery. Well, what do you know? :)

Griff, on the other hand, is eventually a decent character - but he's essentially a cipher until the last 50 odd pages, where he suddenly becomes so thoughtfully interesting I'm even more annoyed he wasn't the main character all along. I strongly suspect, to be honest, that Voigt is making a deliberate commentary on trauma and heroism, showing that a life dedicated to stepping on others to get to the top and general violence isn't the recipe for a happy ending, but though I admire that approach and see the point of it I hate the protagonist too much to care. Perhaps if the book had been better balanced between the two of them, but it wasn't.

I'd never read Voigt before this series, but she's so much more interesting when writing women. Her main male characters - Orien in book 2 and Oriel here - are puffed up by narrative beyond all their deserts, while the women are more thoughtfully managed - at least when out of the orbit of their so-called romantic interests.

Cookie-cutter epic fantasy, average in every respect. It checks off pretty much every expectation I have of this particular sub-genre.

In all fairness, epic fantasy is a personal hard sell. There are a few books of the type that I love, but mostly it doesn't do a whole lot for me. Luck in the Shadows is a competently executed book, and I liked it well enough. Apparently it's the first in a series. I probably won't be reading the rest. Not because it's done anything wrong - it hasn't. It just hasn't grabbed my attention more than usual, and these days epic fantasy has to do better than that to convince me to stick with it.

This is mildly enjoyable but, as with the novelisations of the first two films, it's still a relatively superficial treatment. To give credit where it's due, Kahn makes more of an effort with the characterisation than Foster or Glut, I think, but I had to really grit my teeth at his horrible decision to spell out non-human speech phonetically. There are far too many sentences like this: "'Poot-wEEt beDOO gung ooble DEEp!' vocalized Artoo-Detoo." There is just no excuse.

Skip the novelisations, the films are enormously superior.

I read and reviewed each of the three books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating for the collection's an average of the three individual ratings: A New Hope earned 3 stars, and both Empire and Jedi earned 2.

Look, they are not great. Novelisations, for me, need to do more than just rehash what's on the screen. Especially when the films are as excellent as they are, retellings as superficial as these just don't cut it. I read them because I've heard good things about the extended universe so thought I'd start from the beginning, but things better improve smartly is all I can say. Especially on the characterisation front - books have the opportunity to do that better than films, I think, so why that wasn't taken advantage of here I don't know.

A very strong ending saves this tale of two morons from being, well, a tale of two morons who systematically wreck everything they've got going for them. I can't even really call it a tragedy even though, being self-inflicted, it pretty much deserves the title, because it's not actually tragic that these two fools are dead. Good riddance to 'em, I say. It's not as if Caesar's a particularly likable alternative either, but he is competent and I'll forgive a lot for competency.

I'm reminded a little at the end of Romeo and Juliet, who also managed to kill themselves through an excess of drama, but R&J were children so one can forgive them their immaturity. Antony and Cleo do not have the same excuse; they're just silly and selfish, continuously vacillating and not at all glorious, despite Caesar trying to slap a good final face on them regardless.

I don't really want to call this a likeable book, because rape is so much at the centre of it - for both the two main female characters - that it is at times a sickening read, but it's certainly a compelling one - though it's the most compelling when not dealing with the continual sexual assault. Instead it's the quiet character moments that stand out the most. This is especially true of Elske: her personality and especially her emotional growth were both aspects of this book that I found genuinely enjoyable. Voigt has created a memorable character here, even more so than Jackaroo's Gwyn.

Elske the book, on the other hand, doesn't reach the heights of Jackaroo, but then no other book in this series does either. (And why on earth the book's been covered with a Vermeer painting is beyond me.)