octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I got sent this by a mate. It was her copy - hi, Miriam! - and when she finished reading, full of hollow laughter (she was, as you can probably guess, a grad student) she sent it to me because we've both spent years being grad students and happily bitching to each other about the very particular problems of that life. Some time later, I've finally gotten around to reading it... and this snarky little book is very sadly recognisable. I had my own hollow laughter at points - especially at the academic who disapproves of your thesis because you don't cite them enough, or the ancient founder of the department who is a horror at the student seminars none of us want to be at. Please just hand over the free food and be done with it.

This was more interesting than the first volume, and that's mostly due to the greater emphasis on examples over theory. I couldn't swear that the ratio was actually any different, to be honest, but it felt as if it were. Look, there's no getting around the fact that this series is a dense read; I'm slowly making my way through it, often at no more than 25 pages a day. But sometimes material is worth taking the time to think about and understand, and that's the case here. One of Arendt's main arguments in this volume is that colonisation is a driving factor in the development of totalitarianism, and she makes a pretty convincing argument. The lengthy section on race in South Africa was especially illuminating - genuinely fascinating, actually - the kind of extended example which makes theory clearer and which was so often lacking in the first book.

3.5, rounding up to 4 stars. This bears a strong similarity to the earlier Web of the Romulans, but I enjoyed both of them so the repetition bothers me less than it might have. What does bother me is that both the Federation and Romulan sides of this conflict appear to adhere firmly to the Smurfette principle - and the single woman with any focus on each side is stuck with the stereotypical storylines of her gender. One's a glorified and nurturing love interest, the other gets fridged. Deeply irritating. Overwhelming that irritation, however, and the thing that drags this story up almost single-handedly from the average Trek outing, is the fair and well-explored clash in philosophy between Robert April and George Kirk. As always in this series, diversity of opinion tends to lead to illumination, and in particular I'd like to see more of the idealist April in the future.

In the middle of Passover, 13 year old Hannah is magically transported back to the time of WW2, and everything goes exactly how you would expect. Absolutely everything. There's nothing here that's not telegraphed a mile in advance, but a plot doesn't have to be a mystery for a book to be worthwhile. Hannah gets back to her own time, having Learned a Lesson, but she's a sympathetic character and one can't help but feel for her. I have to say, though, that as - I don't want to say "likeable", because concentration camps don't make for likeable reading - but as competent as this book is, it's not a patch on the fantastic Briar Rose, also by Yolen, which has a similar theme and is admittedly directed at somewhat older readers. Perhaps if I'd read The Devil's Arithmetic as a kid, and before the other, it would have made a deeper impression. As it is, Briar Rose is the one I'd read again.

Yeah, I didn't much enjoy this. I can see the idea behind it - an obsession with sadism that propels a young man into fantasies of murder - but the execution seems to be more concerned with shock value than anything else. I often find that the horror films I like least are the slashers, the ones least concerned with story and more with gross-out gore, and that's the case here. There's only so often you can read about violent sex before the author's desire to shock starts to seem laboured and tedious, and constantly ratcheting up the gore value - there's a horribly explicit scene of the rape and murder of a child - doesn't increase my interest. On top of that, the prose just doesn't do anything for me. Sample line: "His head must have swivelled too quickly or something, because it started trembling like what's-her-name's... Katharine Hepburn's." Ugly prose kills even good stories stone dead for me, and this is just not that good a story to begin with.

The structure of this book is absolutely fantastic, my favourite thing about it for sure. It shifts back and forward in time, between characters and events, and Mandel is so accomplished that it's not confusing or disorienting on any level. Really excellently done. I only wish I'd been as enamoured of the characters as I was the construction. It's not that any of them are unlikeable - though as the central thread tying everyone together I thought Arthur was relatively bland - it's just that I never seemed to get beyond mild interest in any of them.

Part of that may come from bias as to their actions, which I found continually frustrating, although that's really only applicable to the survivors of the plague rather than those who existed before. Don't get me wrong, I really love the idea of a travelling Shakespeare group in a post-apocalyptic landscape, I think the concept is great, but the communities they all travel through... why are they all so thick? I realise in the immediate aftermath of the plague, people are staying away from hotels and other community buildings, but it seems that even 20 years on, no-one's had the common sense to go to a public library and raid the science section to try and get things working again. All the time it's "we've run out of fuel, woe is us" - is this an alternate universe in which solar panels just don't exist? Or water wheels, even? I'm glad to see that at the very end there's hope of electricity somewhere, and perhaps it's because I'm science-minded myself, but the great technological gap in this story - specifically that no-one even considers how to broach it, ever - is gaping. And yeah, I get that art is at the centre of the narrative rather than science, but if you're going to make that substitution I would have loved to see it made all-out, with reproductions of the Station Eleven comic, for instance. Which all sounds like a lot of complaints from me but I did like this book, really I did. And I'll say it again: the structure is a marvel.

I thought this was lovely, and an interesting take on the magic school trope - what happens to the kids who are left behind when the world suddenly opens up for their siblings. I think my favourite thing about this story - and it's mentioned in the interview afterwards, so clearly it's a factor for the author as well - is the belief that not everyone left behind is a Petunia Dursley, that in most cases these unmagical kids will struggle with rejection and acceptance but care for their sibling will ultimately win out over jealousy. And that's what Henry has to deal with, as her little sister reluctantly sets off for a life she's not particularly enamoured of either. Gabrielle would rather stick with science and astronomy, but she's got no more choice than Henry when it comes to her identity, and the way that both sisters learn to live with what they're becoming makes for some very enjoyable reading.

Exhaustively researched account of the events leading up to the 9/11 attack. Knowing very little about the topic as I did, Wright laid out the intricacies very clearly - the mark of a well-written book, I think, is the ability to make the complex understandable, and that's what happened here. Well, when I say understandable: the events are understandable. The motivations, frankly, still fail to make any damn sense to me. One of those factors, Wright reports, seems to be a crippling sense of humiliation that I have to admit I find it hard to have much time for. One would think that it would be easier to gain respect from others (and for one's self) by funnelling research money into curing cancer rather than weaponising anthrax, for example, but clearly some people find the prospect of wholesale slaughter more therapeutic to their egos. What did surprise me, even more than this, was the sheer amount of backstabbing going on - not just on the side of the Islamist militants, but also between the American organisations like the FBI and CIA. I suppose every faction wants to grab onto power any way they can get it, but the sheer mental gymnastics, hypocrisy, and moral equivocation required to deceive, betray, and undercut your allies and bleed them dry at every step... it's genuinely exhausting to read.

Which is to say it's all very interesting, but I can't say I feel much enlightened.

Interesting short novel inspired by the real-life group of Harlem artists to which the author belonged back in the 1920s. In some ways I feel I'm missing a lot here - the brief introduction of this edition gives some of the context, but the characters in Infants of the Spring are apparently based on other artists in the group, and I neither know enough about them or their work to pick up on the parallels and all the satirical references. (On the other hand, there are a few more people to add to my to-read list, which is never a bad thing.) Beyond all this missed specificity, however, is an often painfully incisive look at race - both through the friendship of Ray and Stephen, and through the different social reactions to this boarding house full of black artists. There's a sort of treacherous whirlpool of expectation, ambition, and prejudice which makes for genuinely compelling reading, and gives some insight as to what the author must have experienced himself.

I've a story in this, and I've got a couple of mates with stories in here as well so I am Biased with a capital B. That being said, I've just finished reading this and I'm so happy I didn't just leave it looking pretty on my bookshelf, because so many of the stories in here are awesome. Each time I thought I'd found my favourite I kept reading, and found another one that I liked even more. The editor has done a fantastic job with her selections, and while I agree with her introductory regrets about the lack of Pacific Island authors, New Zealand in particular is very well represented here and I'm always up for that.

There are a lot of ocean stories here, as is to be expected. Nature and ecology also has a strong influence, and I particularly enjoy these things in my horror so this anthology is perfect for me. Highlights include the truly repulsive globster from A.C. Buchanan's "Into the Sickly Light" and Rue Karney's creepy, vicious creation "The Hand Monster". I think my favourite of the bunch, however, is Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada's "All My Relations", which has the most gloriously perfect ending I can imagine. Go read it, you won't be sorry.