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octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)
Really interesting and exhaustively researched compare-and-contrast piece, focusing on New Zealand and the United States. I've been meaning to read it for years, and am glad I've finally gotten round to it. Fischer's thesis is simple: both of these nations have a founding ideal. For NZ that ideal is fairness, for the US it is freedom. In both cases, these ideals permeate the culture of their respective countries, and if one looks closely at the history and politics of those countries, they can see how those closely-held ideals have shaped them into very different communities.
Look, I'm convinced. I say that being somewhat biased. I'm a New Zealander, and a lot of what Fischer has to say about fairness here strikes a chord. My experiences of America are by comparison minimal - a couple of visits, but mostly it's been observation from the other side of the world. I can only assume that Fischer, who is American himself, has got it as accurate for his own country as he has for mine. The evidence he's chosen to present seems to indicate that he has. That evidence is apparently enormous. (It certainly felt enormous, reading it.) Fischer covers a number of different aspects within overall society - race relations, the role of women, of the military, of social welfare, of economic history... the points of contrast go on and on. And the sheer weight of argument builds up and builds up, and although the general argument is strongly simplified (I suspect reality is a little more nuanced than the author sometimes makes it out to be) it's still genuinely fascinating to see how two often-competing ideals can drive development in two very different directions. It can, however, feel all too weighty and it does become a bit repetitive in places. I can't help but think that a bit of judicious pruning might have helped, as well as a more thorough exploration of potentially (adequately) free and fair societies - this last is given very short shrift in the conclusion, despite being one of the ostensible purposes of the book as a whole. All in all though, it's thought-provoking stuff and well worth reading.
Look, I'm convinced. I say that being somewhat biased. I'm a New Zealander, and a lot of what Fischer has to say about fairness here strikes a chord. My experiences of America are by comparison minimal - a couple of visits, but mostly it's been observation from the other side of the world. I can only assume that Fischer, who is American himself, has got it as accurate for his own country as he has for mine. The evidence he's chosen to present seems to indicate that he has. That evidence is apparently enormous. (It certainly felt enormous, reading it.) Fischer covers a number of different aspects within overall society - race relations, the role of women, of the military, of social welfare, of economic history... the points of contrast go on and on. And the sheer weight of argument builds up and builds up, and although the general argument is strongly simplified (I suspect reality is a little more nuanced than the author sometimes makes it out to be) it's still genuinely fascinating to see how two often-competing ideals can drive development in two very different directions. It can, however, feel all too weighty and it does become a bit repetitive in places. I can't help but think that a bit of judicious pruning might have helped, as well as a more thorough exploration of potentially (adequately) free and fair societies - this last is given very short shrift in the conclusion, despite being one of the ostensible purposes of the book as a whole. All in all though, it's thought-provoking stuff and well worth reading.
This is a story of one of the little known heroes of NZ conservation. Henry, possessing a real love of birds and a very clear understanding of how their native populations were being decimated through human actions (introduction of pests such as rats and ferrets, land clearance, hunting and so on) tried to set up the first island reserve, on Resolution Island in Fiordland. He transplanted endangered birds such as kiwi and kakapo to Resolution and the smaller islands around it, trying to keep the populations alive, and his slow realisation that he can't is horrible to read.
Henry is such an interesting character. He spends so much of his life in isolation, out in torrential, remote Fiordland, and the Hills don't gloss over the difficulties of what this is like in the late 19th/early 20th century. It doesn't help that Henry is terribly lonely, prone to depression, at one point actively suicidal (he shoots himself in the head but it doesn't work)... He's a genuinely sympathetic figure. I wanted him to succeed. I knew that he didn't. The reserve failed, the birds died.
Now, kakapo and takahe and kiwi teeter on the brink, even more vulnerable than they were in Henry's day. Interestingly, the epilogue makes it clear that Henry was well in advance of his time with his pioneering conservation efforts - today, NZ's Department of Conservation relies on island reserves to keep our endangered species alive - and, futile as it seemed to him at the time, his knowledge was invaluable in setting them up. It's such an interesting book, extremely well-researched, on such an interesting man. I wish he could have seen what his work led to. It might have made life a little easier for him.
Henry is such an interesting character. He spends so much of his life in isolation, out in torrential, remote Fiordland, and the Hills don't gloss over the difficulties of what this is like in the late 19th/early 20th century. It doesn't help that Henry is terribly lonely, prone to depression, at one point actively suicidal (he shoots himself in the head but it doesn't work)... He's a genuinely sympathetic figure. I wanted him to succeed. I knew that he didn't. The reserve failed, the birds died.
Now, kakapo and takahe and kiwi teeter on the brink, even more vulnerable than they were in Henry's day. Interestingly, the epilogue makes it clear that Henry was well in advance of his time with his pioneering conservation efforts - today, NZ's Department of Conservation relies on island reserves to keep our endangered species alive - and, futile as it seemed to him at the time, his knowledge was invaluable in setting them up. It's such an interesting book, extremely well-researched, on such an interesting man. I wish he could have seen what his work led to. It might have made life a little easier for him.
This is the best of the series so far, but it's not without its (gaping) flaws. Annah is for me the most relatable of the three protagonists of the books, and as much as her struggle is - like everyone's - the zombies, she's also limited by her own refusal to really engage with other people. That's not something that Mary or Gabry ever had to deal with, but it's the most realistic response, I think, for a person in the midst of zombie apocalypse. When everyone you get attached to leaves - often in hideous and gory ways - well, most people would pull back into themselves somewhat. It's the rational response, and Ryan doesn't shy away from how very badly Annah has been affected.
Better than this, though, are all the truly horrifying images of the story. Ryan's always been very good, in this series, at painting pictures that are genuinely creepy. The zombies waking up under ice, the infestation and slow chase through subway tunnels, the mass of zombies slowly breaking down every barrier between themselves and human warmth... they're all fantastic. A+ for the creepy images!
What's keeping this book from being a 4 star read are the antagonists. Not the zombies, but the Recruiters, who ostensibly exist to protect the city and, when that city falls, retreat to an all-male enclave that falls into every pathetic and irritating post-apocalyptic trope out there: violent, sexually aggressive, woman-hating arseholes. They like torture, they take pleasure in suffering. And they think they can survive that way. Annah points out, towards the end, that all their attempts to ensure that future generations survive will fail because there aren't any women with them on their fortress island, which, I distinctly remember female Recruits in previous books, but they've just disappeared from the narrative in favour of this bullshit. Ox (you can tell his intelligence from his name), the man who's running the Recruiters, says there are some Souler women available, but he and his men have been feeding them to zombies for fun, when they're not indiscriminately shooting any of the very few survivors that come near. The utter stupidity of this storyline is too much to take. It's just lazy, lazy world-building, for the sake of resurrecting the most tired trope in all of post-apocalypse. I complain a lot about the "we must rebuild the world! (therefore it's clearly acceptable to rape to do it)" narrative that pops up so often in post-apocalyptic dystopias, but never have I seen one where the men don't even appear to grasp that they're not parthenogenic.
I mean, I know that zombies are supposed to eat people's brains, and that must have been the case here, because the biggest dark and hollow place of this book resides firmly inside the empty, eaten-out skulls of the bad guys.
Better than this, though, are all the truly horrifying images of the story. Ryan's always been very good, in this series, at painting pictures that are genuinely creepy. The zombies waking up under ice, the infestation and slow chase through subway tunnels, the mass of zombies slowly breaking down every barrier between themselves and human warmth... they're all fantastic. A+ for the creepy images!
What's keeping this book from being a 4 star read are the antagonists. Not the zombies, but the Recruiters, who ostensibly exist to protect the city and, when that city falls, retreat to an all-male enclave that falls into every pathetic and irritating post-apocalyptic trope out there: violent, sexually aggressive, woman-hating arseholes. They like torture, they take pleasure in suffering. And they think they can survive that way. Annah points out, towards the end, that all their attempts to ensure that future generations survive will fail because there aren't any women with them on their fortress island, which, I distinctly remember female Recruits in previous books, but they've just disappeared from the narrative in favour of this bullshit. Ox (you can tell his intelligence from his name), the man who's running the Recruiters, says there are some Souler women available, but he and his men have been feeding them to zombies for fun, when they're not indiscriminately shooting any of the very few survivors that come near. The utter stupidity of this storyline is too much to take. It's just lazy, lazy world-building, for the sake of resurrecting the most tired trope in all of post-apocalypse. I complain a lot about the "we must rebuild the world! (therefore it's clearly acceptable to rape to do it)" narrative that pops up so often in post-apocalyptic dystopias, but never have I seen one where the men don't even appear to grasp that they're not parthenogenic.
I mean, I know that zombies are supposed to eat people's brains, and that must have been the case here, because the biggest dark and hollow place of this book resides firmly inside the empty, eaten-out skulls of the bad guys.
I'm so glad I read this particular edition (Classics in Context) because its opening material, which includes descriptions of the Igbo culture, allowed me to understand so much more of what was going on in the subsequent text. And that text is very, very interesting. It looks at how colonialism has affected the life of one man, Okonkwo, but this man is himself a tragic microcosm for the effects of colonialism on society as a whole. The book's therefore written on multiple levels, but the prose is so restrained, and so accomplished, that all the work going on under the surface is barely visible. It's just a fascinating piece of literature, one I've been meaning to read for ages, and I'm so glad I finally did. The end, in particular, is outstanding - that final paragraph is a masterpiece of closure, imbued with terrible irony. (It's funny how often outstanding paragraphs stick in your mind, and how few there really are. The final paragraph of Things Fall Apart is as excellent and affecting as the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House - they are perfect distillations of theme. The two stories are nothing alike, but can their authors ever shape a sentence.)
The worst of the lot so far. Even the artwork isn't living up to the standard set by previous volumes. It's not a total loss - I do like the emphasis on found family that's going on here, and how the central reason for vengeance resulted from the unseen consequences of an act of thoughtless and petty destruction - but mostly it's just boring. Page after page of Miho killing people, and it's nowhere near as interesting as Miller seems to think it is. She's not any sort of character, just a pretty murder machine, and if I never hear the patronising phrase "deadly little Miho" again it will be too soon.
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There's a lot that I do like about this - Nancy's backstory for one, and I like that with Hartigan there's a protagonist who's the best part of the story again. Also, for all the unrelenting obsession this series has with violence against women - honestly it's somewhat off-putting, and seems to be an excuse to draw them as naked as possible as often as possible - I was still engaged by most of the story, and the ending was outstanding.
Unfortunately there were some parts that just didn't make any sense to me. Nancy's crush on a man old enough to be her grandfather didn't ring even the slightest bit true. (I wish I could say it was a surprise, but given how women tend to be presented in this series it was anything but.) Though for me, the biggest problem was the gaping hole of idiot plot at the centre of the narrative. All the time that Senator Rourke spent rebuilding his wreck of a son, bringing in gene therapists to rebuild his genitalia and so forth, leading to the resulting wreck... all because he wanted Junior to have a child to pass on the creepy family legacy. Look, perhaps I spend too much time thinking about Ockham's razor, but wouldn't it be bloody simpler for the Senator just to have another kid himself? Junior's nothing but a liability at this point. Clear the board and start again, and maybe your one-day grandchild won't be able to blend in with a field of buttercups.
Unfortunately there were some parts that just didn't make any sense to me. Nancy's crush on a man old enough to be her grandfather didn't ring even the slightest bit true. (I wish I could say it was a surprise, but given how women tend to be presented in this series it was anything but.) Though for me, the biggest problem was the gaping hole of idiot plot at the centre of the narrative. All the time that Senator Rourke spent rebuilding his wreck of a son, bringing in gene therapists to rebuild his genitalia and so forth, leading to the resulting wreck... all because he wanted Junior to have a child to pass on the creepy family legacy. Look, perhaps I spend too much time thinking about Ockham's razor, but wouldn't it be bloody simpler for the Senator just to have another kid himself? Junior's nothing but a liability at this point. Clear the board and start again, and maybe your one-day grandchild won't be able to blend in with a field of buttercups.
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An improvement on the last volume. Dwight's still a non-entity to me, the thinnest smear of character over humanoid form, but the rest of it's pretty enjoyable. The artwork remains excellent. There's some fantastic imagery in here. Setting so much of the climactic violence around tar pits and giant sculptured dinosaurs may be batshit crazy, in its way, but it's still so compelling to look at - weird and creepy and awesome.
I also like all the political undercurrents, the state of dodgy détente between the cops and the mob and the hookers of Old Town. That sort of shifting power relationship is much more interesting to me than all the fight scenes (even if they do result from it), especially as some of the elements of those fight scenes are starting to feel a little over-used. ("Deadly little Miho" I'm looking at you.) And the whole Irish mercenary subplot seems equally overdone, the product of a story that's trying to throw too much at a wall to see what sticks.
I also like all the political undercurrents, the state of dodgy détente between the cops and the mob and the hookers of Old Town. That sort of shifting power relationship is much more interesting to me than all the fight scenes (even if they do result from it), especially as some of the elements of those fight scenes are starting to feel a little over-used. ("Deadly little Miho" I'm looking at you.) And the whole Irish mercenary subplot seems equally overdone, the product of a story that's trying to throw too much at a wall to see what sticks.
Eh, it didn't grab my attention as much as volume one. The artwork is still really interesting, but the story's just sort of grubbily dull. Every single character seems grossly stereotypical. I think the biggest difference between the two books, however, lies in the protagonist. Marv plays a small role here, but he was really so attention-getting in volume one - I felt pity for him as much as anything else, which was a genuinely compelling effect. By comparison, the main character in A Dame to Kill For is just an annoying whiner. "Oh Ava, oh Ava..." over and over. Honestly, I don't blame Ava that much for trying to get rid of him. I wouldn't have wanted to put up with his constant one-note sulkiness either.
I'd be far more interested in a story that focused on the pack of women running Old Town. Here's hoping volume three isn't a third outing of "man who's obsessed with a girl and starts killing for her", because let's be honest, there are a lot of those stories out there already, and the excellent artwork here doesn't make that old trope as edgy as the story seems to think it does.
I'd be far more interested in a story that focused on the pack of women running Old Town. Here's hoping volume three isn't a third outing of "man who's obsessed with a girl and starts killing for her", because let's be honest, there are a lot of those stories out there already, and the excellent artwork here doesn't make that old trope as edgy as the story seems to think it does.
Honestly, I didn't expect to like this. And it's not that I make a habit of reading books that I expect to dislike, but I am trying to read more broadly. Sin City is a very famous example of its type, so... why not, essentially. And admittedly the opening didn't seem promising. Crapsack world, a woman murdered to provide motivation, other women who exist mostly to be tortured or naked, a man who likes to talk up how bad he is (alright, it might be true but it does come off at first as drama llama bragging, an attempt at edge tipped over into eye-rolling hyperbole). None of these things excite me in stories.
But despite myself I got interested. And found myself rooting for poor old Marv - despite myself, again. And the artwork is interesting, and the unrelenting grimness doesn't get forced aside for a happy ending, and that unhappy end is even a bit sorrow-tinged. So reading outside my comfort zone has paid off here - I don't love it, but the library has the rest of the series and I plan on reading them all now, simply because I want to, so that's something.
But despite myself I got interested. And found myself rooting for poor old Marv - despite myself, again. And the artwork is interesting, and the unrelenting grimness doesn't get forced aside for a happy ending, and that unhappy end is even a bit sorrow-tinged. So reading outside my comfort zone has paid off here - I don't love it, but the library has the rest of the series and I plan on reading them all now, simply because I want to, so that's something.
It's a nice change to read something fast-paced for once! This was a quick enjoyable read that mostly kept me guessing. I might have rated it higher if it weren't for the absolutely terrible twist at the very end. Those last two pages were not good.