octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I cannot possibly express how little interest I have in the whole opening sequence of the elder gods. Luckily this, and the God Butcher's deeply boring and unoriginal whining about how the gods failed him (what a disappointingly unsurprising motivation) are over quickly and the three different timelines begin to coalesce into something far more interesting. Current Thor meets Old Thor - and mistakes him for their father - and that's a bitter partnership I'm interested in seeing explored. But surprisingly my preference in this issue has gone decidedly to junior. Young Thor's torture and rescue is genuinely compelling, and watching him try to cover it all up is even more so. Pity the focus wasn't more on this because it speaks to a deep insecurity that I've never associated with the character before.

I know I keep banging on about structure with these reviews, but I do think the story structure here is so effectively done and finely judged, and this particular issue is a high point. There are three different storylines going on here, all concerning the same character at different stages of his life, and the use of colour to differentiate them is clear and useful. Of those three storylines, I found the one of the old, dying Thor to be the most affecting. I mean, it's an easy pathos but it works - especially when you compare it to the bit that didn't work as well for me. The whole Chronux storyline, what with its pool of blood, just isn't grabbing me. Also, I'm not sensing much interesting motivation from the God Butcher here, I have to say. It's all the-gods-are-useless-cancers-on-the-universe which, yes, I tend to agree, but so are lots of things and it doesn't really excuse the bloodbath. I feel like I've read this sort of thing before. Many times, in fact.

There's a lot to like about this story of an isolated village surrounded by zombies. The religious control of the Sisterhood is extremely interesting, a sort of gender-flipped throwback reminiscent of The Chrysalids, and the consequent conflict is mostly based around power and control. Mary, the character at the centre of the narrative, is pretty much trapped by geography and consumption into either an unwanted marriage or a life of creepy religious isolation, and unsurprisingly she doesn't much want either. Equally unsurprisingly, a third option appears, and she and a small band of survivors wend their way through the increasingly bloody forest. The zombies are out for human flesh and they're pretty horrifying - actually the whole story is one long claustrophobic stretch of tension.

For the most part. Because interwoven with this excellently done horror is one of the most tedious love triangles in existence. Both Harry and Travis are weak-minded, vacillating individuals and there was barely half a page on either of them before I was wishing them both a long and drawn out death. Frankly, Mary's constant moaning on about them made me wish it for her sometimes as well. That love triangle is solely responsible for my 3 star rating. Without it, this book would be 4. Credit where it's due, though, by the end the triangle is comprehensively and permanently demolished - I understand there are sequels to this book, and I look forward to reading them on the grounds that, unlike the zombies, said triangle is incapable of being reanimated.

An enormous - and enormously complex - autobiography of Mandela's life. I'm not going to lie, it took me months to get through it. Not because it's badly written or confusing (it isn't) but because I kept wanting to stop and think and digest what I'd just read - and let's face it, the subject matter deserves the courtesy. The dismantling of apartheid in South Africa was a monumental effort, and this book doesn't skim over any of it. Mandela is careful to spread the credit around, as it was only through the combined dedication, work, and risk of many that the political revolution in SA succeeded. Even so, it speaks to an underlying graciousness of character, and it's Mandela himself who's the central figure holding this narrative together.

He's become an icon now, of course, and it's always a dangerous thing to learn about icons... there's such a risk of disappointment, because a man is not a myth and no amount of myth-making can keep them from sharing in the ordinary pettiness of ordinary people. Yet this is one of those cases, I think, where that fundamental humanity actually serves the text. I'm not sure I could believe an account of someone imprisoned so unjustly for so long if it lacked even trace amounts of anger and bitterness, the regret at prices paid. Yet the fact that Mandela is relatively open about his feelings - even if he says it's difficult for him - makes I think his struggle to compromise and look forward and even forgive, a little, a more affecting and admirable one.

It really is an extraordinary book. And as long as it took me to read, I can't say that I'm sorry. Some things take far more time than they should, but others simply should not be rushed.

It is absolutely impossible for me to read these poems without them taking on the rhythm and beat of the musical. Impossible. It's been decades since I first saw that musical - the book was a Christmas present later that same year - and the songs are hard-wired into my brain. I don't know if that's making me give this a different rating than I might have given it otherwise, but I suspect that my love for the musical is wrenching that rating slightly upwards. Either way, it's pretty much impossible for me to differentiate the two at this point. Suffice to say this is a deeply entertaining collection of pretty much ridiculous rhymes, and if I had to pick a favourite at gunpoint it would probably be "Skimbleshanks: the Railway Cat" ("the cat on the railway traaaaaaaaain!").

To be honest, I tend to find alphabet books a little dull. I mean, there's only so many ways you can introduce the same 26 letters, in the same order. They feel like something I should gabble through. But this is okay - it's not out of the park wonderful or anything, but it's bright and lively and I appreciated how progressively banged-up the letters get when they fall out of the tree, and how the higher case come to parental rescue of the lower. (Why are letters climbing a coconut tree? I've no earthly idea. Just go with it.)

The grumpy librarian continues to be my favourite character here, and I'm glad it didn't take him long to suss that something was going on with Shadrak. You'd think I would have suspected exactly what that was, given the in-retrospect-obvious, but clearly I'm having an off night. Anyway, that was the best part of this. The double act between current and future Thors seems a little muted right now, but future Thor came off so strongly in the first half dozen issues that I suppose he had to slacken eventually, and that's what happens here.

I'm enjoying these comics, but it's beginning to feel like the wow factor has dropped a bit. I think I preferred the three separate storylines to the bringing all the Thors together into the same piece of time and space. I just don't care that much about their petty bitching at each other, and the complex structure has been replaced by a straight race to stop the bomb, which is entertaining if not riveting. I do like the three grand-daughters, though, and the more I see gods of different species working together the more interested I am in what's happening here.

It's news to no-one, I think, that "The Waste Land" is one of the revolutionary poems of the twentieth century. It's unashamedly erudite, complex, layered... it's extraordinary, and as good as the other poems of the title are, in some ways they just don't match up. And yet, and yet... you can know something is excellent, appreciate it on any number of deserving levels, and still be unmoved by it on others. Because for all its beautiful, challenging nature, this poem fascinates me on an intellectual level and completely fails to move me on an emotional one. And it's not as if Eliot is incapable of evoking emotion in me. There are passages in "Choruses from 'The Rock'", in "Ash Wednesday" and "Landscapes" that affect me in ways "The Waste Land" just doesn't.

It's still plain better than they are.

This is mostly one long action-type fight, and with the best will in the world I'm never that interested in those. What I am interested in is the characterisation of Avenger-Thor as the god who doubts. Because, retreading old ground that he is, Gorr is still right in that all these deities do seem fairly useless from the perspective of the ordinary individual. We all have to grapple at one stage or other with the what-good-are-you? question, and it seems the gods have, in general, been putting this off. I hope this is something that's further explored in later issues, because more characterisation and less throwing around of hammers is what's going to appeal most to me, I think.