octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I wanted to like this more than I did. And credit where it's due, there are parts of this that were excellent. The alien spider scientist, who was essentially a main character for the duration, was as interesting and likeable as the regular crew, and Duane makes an extra effort to integrate a number of alien species into the Enterprise crew. So often it appears as thoroughly human, with the occasional exception thrown in, but the constant and genuine diversity here really helped to give that sense of wonder that I think Duane was reaching for with the plot. The plot, alas, was where this book failed for me. The first half felt weighed down with endless technobabble, and the second was almost mystic fantasy. Neither of these things enthuse me - for example, the many-mind confusion during the new travel, in which memories of a number of characters were melded together, left me cold every time. I think it was meant to be exciting and meaningful, but it just felt tedious and every time it recurred I wished she'd just get on with it. I can't help but think that buried under all this excess presentation is a story worthy of the characters, but by the end I was tired of digging for it.

This is delightful, and I'm not just saying it because I identify with the chocolate-obsessed beast of the title. The story goes along fairly well-defined lines at first: a young girl runs away from home to see the world and prove herself capable, and that the girl is a girl dragon doesn't take away from the familiarity of it all. But the taste of chocolate proves transformative, and Aventurine is suddenly a different shape, a human shape, and while that's very upsetting it's also an avenue for gorging, because if human shapes can do nothing else they can apprentice themselves to chocolatiers, because of course that's what any self-respecting apex predator would do! The results are fun and feel-good and I love how nearly all the bonds that Aventurine forms on her adventures are with other women - other young women, especially - and they're all willing to help save the day when her (genuinely) loving family comes looking for her.

This wasn't one of those fantasy novels that really grabbed my attention, but I liked it well enough anyway. It's notable for two things. The first is an oracular pig, and I haven't seen a lot of them before! I like, too, that Hen Wen is essentially piggish. There's no anthropomorphism going on here: she's a special pig but she is a pig, and the one astounding bit of foresight that she shows happens off-page, which I think is great. Usually I'm not too excited about having the important bits happen off-page - why have a story that doesn't show them? - but it'd be hard to show a pig that's demonstrably oracular and still have it remain recognisably piggy... and I did find piggy little Hen Wen the most entertaining part of this book. The other aspect I really warmed to was that Taran, the assistant pig-keeper, was in his way a very ineffective sort of hero. And the book makes very clear, towards the end, that it was his continual failures and getting back up afterwards, refusing to give up, that made him ultimately successful. It's very easy to identify with a hero like that.

This reminded me very much of Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Naturally the cultures in each book are hugely different - while Wilder described the life of a white settler family, the community that Erdrich focuses on is Native American. But both have a little girl at the centre of the narrative, and both follow that child over the course of a year. Taking part in the family chores over the changing seasons (including maple syrup tapping!), relationships with family and especially siblings... these are things shared by both books. But I think on balance I prefer The Birchbark House, for several reasons. The sense of place is done really well here, the way of life is new and interesting (at least from my perspective), and the whole smallpox storyline is genuinely affecting. Plus Omakayas herself is an extremely likeable character, and that always helps.

This is one of those books that is wonderful and awful at the same time. Wonderful because the skill level here is so high, the descent into madness so painfully and carefully layered, that it's a masterpiece and a pleasure to read. Awful because it reflects the historical reality of medical care that Gilman suffered through herself and found absolutely crushing. The narrator of the book, who is affected by what we would refer to today as post-natal depression, is forced by her husband and brother to undergo the accepted treatment for a nervous breakdown - near total isolation and want of activity. It's essentially solitary confinement in the room with the yellow wall-paper, and after three months of fighting to retain a sense of identity and energy and self against the pull of the paper and the absolutely patronising, infantilising attitude of her doctor husband, the narrator goes insane. It is terrifyingly plausible, especially when you're aware of the historical context.

Part of me feels bad that I got so much entertainment out of this slow motion train wreck, but enjoy it I did. And let's face it, the fact that the book got written at all was hint enough that there was a happy ending... or at least a more positive one. But the bulk of this book is Walls looking back at a genuinely disturbing childhood. Both her parents were monstrously selfish and absolutely neglectful - they could blabber on about being unconventional free spirits as much as they liked, but when their children were reduced to digging through rubbish bins for food they were solidly in Bad Parent territory, and felt no inclination to dig themselves out, or even use the resources they had to make sure their kids were taken care of. (If they even noticed the kids were starving in the first place, that is. I could never really tell.) It's breath-taking how awful they were, and the very clear understanding the kids had of their parents' monumental failings is just painfully written. I'm not sure how much forgiveness I could muster up in Walls' place, but if she doesn't always forgive or even understand there's a final reaching for acceptance there, I think, which is really all anyone can do under the circumstances - the final acknowledgement that they'd never change, that she can move on without them. Family may be family but there's no use being dragged down by them, not when they're so determined to be anchors. This is sad and horrifying and clear-sighted and hopeful, and really beautifully written, and it's no surprise that it's spent so long on the bestseller list.

I had my doubts about reading this because it was a story about a dog, and it was a Newbery Honour Book, which made me suspect the dog would die. (Newbery does reward dead pets, don't ask me why.) But for once, for once! the dog survived and had a happy ever after, and so did everyone the dog met. Because it's basically a furry shambling ball of happiness, plucked off the street (supermarket aisle) like an orphan and given to a small girl who is half an orphan herself. It's a quick, easy read and thoroughly good-natured, all without being saccharine, which is lovely.

As someone who has had problems tramping before - albeit nothing at this disastrous scale, a broken bone and a sudden attack of fever is all I've ever had to deal with in the bush, and a kinder bush than the Alaskan at that - reading this has been an odd mix of sympathy and judgement. Things do go wrong when you go tramping in remote places, accidents happen, and when they do, well, if you're alone the problems are compounded. Yet I can't help but identify with McCandless, wanting to get away and experience the beauty and isolation as he does, because for all the increased risk there's something very attractive about being alone in the bush. I share his tendency there... to an extent. But I can't help but think that he goes beyond all common sense here, and that his eventual death was almost inevitable under the circumstances, leading directly from his choice to be so poorly prepared. (It's particularly hard not to feel for his poor family, who lost a son and brother to starvation because he was so over-confident he didn't even bother to take a map with him into the wild - a map that very likely could have saved him.) And for all this book is a hugely sympathetic account of McCandless' life - Krakauer clearly feels for his subject as well - it's hard not to see it as a cautionary tale of someone who loved nature just a tiny bit more than he respected it.

Colour facsimile editions like this are really the best way to read Blake, I think. You lose so much with conventional print on a page in comparison - his art and poems are so intertwined that it's hard to get the flavour of them out of simple transcription. That being said, this isn't my favourite of his books. The poems are designedly saccharine, and the art is watered down to match. (It certainly doesn't approach the vivid and unforgettable illustrations of his Book of Urizen for instance.) In fairness, he's chosen a difficult subject. Sweet little children prancing through fields of blossom and lying down with lions and so forth, and though it's occasionally leavened with less treacly concerns such as racism and child labour, it's still not very less, with the remedy being basically "Put up with it and you'll get your reward in heaven." But then innocence is very far from justice and judgement...

One of my favourites! I don't know how many times I've read this, but I've just read it again and so thought it was time to finally log it here. Despite it taking place some generations ago, the story still feels so very modern to me - I think because the structure is so interesting, so technologically up-to-date for its time, and because it's so inclusive of a number of different narrators and viewpoints. And, let's face it, this isn't the first vampire story but it's the one all others are judged by, and is the genesis of the popular perception of the vampire today. Dracula himself is so creepy, and so cold, and so absolutely devoid of the compassion that sets all the other characters apart. And yet Stoker is careful to make him an object of compassion as well - but not blind compassion, that which has led to so much vacuous over-excusing of monstrosity in many more contemporary vampire narratives. Dracula is a clear evil who needs to be destroyed, and yet even in the act of killing him the characters (and the readers) can feel a brief moment of pity for the man that existed before Dracula, and the release that real death has given him.

It's just an astonishingly well-written book on the existence and spread and defeat of evil. No wonder people keep coming back to it.