octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

A man borrows a dog to walk round the coast of south-west England. Three decades later, I'm chortling over this book at a second-hand book stall and the nice lady in charge lets me have it for free. I'd have paid for it, really I would, because this book is hilarious. The dog is question is small and disreputable and wedded to city life - think Discworld's Gaspode but without the brains. It is singularly unpleasant to be around (its owners break up and fight over who doesn't get to keep it), largely due to the fact that Boogie's one great talent in life is a hideous, nuclear-level flatulence and Wallington has to share a tent with it.

This is really just a story about a man who takes a snide, stinking little beast on a walk. It's gentle and easy to read and nothing much happens but it's still deeply, deeply entertaining.

Stylishly illustrated novella that's interesting but flawed. Well-written and enjoyable as it is, I just can't get past the giant plot hole in the middle: a young boy sets off a firework in the werewolf's face and the creature loses an eye. The police don't believe the child saw a werewolf - the town murders are being blamed on a serial killer, and they tend to think the trauma of the attack made him see a monster instead of a man. But one of the town regulars pops up sans eye, the very next day, and no-one sees any connection whatsoever. One cop thinks it can't possibly be Eyeless Man, and so doesn't even bother to interview him.

I'm sorry, but if this isn't the perfect exemplar of "idiot plot" I don't know what is.

I read this with mild enjoyment and some interest. At this point I've almost stopped caring about the narrative itself (although, reading through these histories, I'm so bombarded with repetition that even Fucking Turin comes to be slightly affecting, which at this point I can only put down to Stockholm Syndrome). No such sympathy for the house of Fucking Fëanor, though, who should have been drowned at birth, the whole wretched clan of them, obsessed with their own bling as they are. Say it with me, people: lives are more important than jewellery.

The interest here lies not so much in the characters, however, but in how Tolkien's perception of them changes (or doesn't) as the years go on. This book basically traces the evolution of the stories, from very early sketches to the most complete forms available, and as a writer myself - albeit not one at Tolkien's level - I do find that interesting. Also: he is more of a nerd than I ever thought, translating his own stories into Old English my God, man, just how much time did you have on your hands?

Wide-ranging and compelling anthology of speculative fiction by black writers. There's such a variety of stories in here, and though a small handful of them didn't do anything for me the quality is in general excellent. There's rather more focus on fantasy than science fiction, but together the stories cover everything from typical speculative creatures (such as werewolves and vampires) to more overtly political narratives (focused on, for instance, reparations and slavery). The anthology ends with three non-fiction essays, discussing various inspirations for some of the writers collected in here, and these were interesting too.

I think the standout stories for me were "Maggies" by Nisi Shawl (about genetically engineered creatures of the selkie-sort, and their effects on the human families who love them), "Yahimba's Choice" by Charles R. Saunders (looks at female circumcision, with a particularly painful and affecting ending), the super-creepy clone harvesting and rebellion of Kevin Brockenbrough's "'Cause Harlem Needs Heroes", and the beautifully written eroticism of Kiini Ibura Salaam's "Desire". Really, though, although these were my favourites I could have listed more - there's a lot of fantastic stories in here, genuinely something for everyone I think, and well worth reading.

The kids from The Boxcar Children spend their summer camping on an island. It all goes pretty much as you'd expect - fishing, swimming, exploring, etc. - but it's still so contrived in some places that all this mildly interesting adventure borders on the ridiculous. (How many lost relatives can one family have?!) And as much as I like to read children who aren't thumping brats, it was almost a relief to get to Benny's tantrum and see one kid at least acting up, instead of always being so unfailingly happy and polite, like they're on the island of Stepford instead of Surprise.

I've got to say, though - and this must be a generational thing - their staple diet of bread and milk, the bread in a bowl with cold milk poured over - sounds mushy and revolting. Did kids ever actually enjoy that slop like these ones seem to? Again I am with Benny: blackberries and cream sounds much nicer.

You know, I'm revising my view on this. I was chatting with the author over Twitter, and it made me think about her story enough to come and reread it, and I like it better on reread than I did the first time around. I remember, when I read it that first time, that it reminded me a little of hard science fiction, a genre that I sometimes find difficult to easily read - it gets bogged down in talking about things rather than people. I still think that the beginning of A Question of Faith does this, with the whole brain processing information section, but on the reread that ended a whole lot quicker than it felt at the time. The relationships between characters took over as a focus of the story much sooner than I remembered, so it's getting an extra star from me. Sometimes you have to read things more than once to get them, perhaps - maybe the first time round I was so stuck on brain processing that I was still trying to grasp it while I was reading the rest, and that rest didn't sink in to my brain as it should have. I was wrong, anyway. I did like the story, and I'd absolutely read more set in this universe in the future.

Original review: There was a really interesting mix of fantasy and science fiction in this story, but ultimately I plumped for classifying it as fantasy because it's essentially a story of myths, of reaching out to communicate with gods and having the result of that communication turn out to be difficult and unexpected. In many ways, though, A Question of Faith reads like a possession narrative. Wahibra undergoes experiments that open his mind to religious contact, and what he contacts comes back into him and takes over. There's even what is essentially an exorcism, although the possessing god doesn't come across as evil so much as just different, operating on a vastly non-human sense of scale. The story does get bogged down a little sometimes in detail rather than feeling, particularly in the first half, and I wish it had explored the idea of singing a little more, but the Egyptian setting is compelling and I liked the relationship between Ceke and her wife.

Fun steampunk adventure where 14 year old Sophronia, the despair of her mother, is packed off to finishing school to learn how to behave like a lady. (Sophronia's preferred activities - tree-climbing, snooping, and taking things apart - not doing a great deal to prepare her for life as an ornament of society.) Turns out the finishing school, which takes place in a giant dirigible, is a cover for teaching young ladies espionage, and Sophronia ends up learning poisons as well as posture. What I like about this is that it deliberately turns away from the "not like other girls" trope. Sophronia is good at things that her family might perceive as unfeminine, but Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy is not so blinkered and binary in its thinking. At the Academy Sophronia makes friends with other girls and learns, along with knife-work and secret messages, to value the traditionally feminine accomplishments she'd previously disdained. Together she and her best friend Dimity use their shared talents in espionage and good manners to save the day (while simultaneously attending Sophronia's sister's coming out ball).

It's complete popcorn, but I like popcorn, so I'll be reading the next in the series for sure; it's great Christmas break material. The whole thing does take a while to get going - I'm not sure information needs to be doled out so slowly to Sophronia to begin with - but the world's fun and the characters are enjoyable so I'm happy.

A man is found dead on a golf course. Shockingly, he didn't die of boredom. 'Twas a knife in the back instead. Which, given this is an Agatha Christie mystery, is really not that unexpected. Enter Poirot. He does come across as smug a lot of the time, and I can see why Hastings is irritated by that, but on the whole it's entertaining enough. There were lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming (and the odd one that I did), but as satisfying as the mystery was, the story itself rested on a number of romantic subplots and pairings, none of which were remotely believable. Seriously, none of them. Luckily they were mostly in the background, and let's hope in future mysteries they mostly stay there, because I'm not interested in reading about Hastings contaminating a crime scene by showing off to a girl ever again. It makes him seem like a dunce, and while Poirot needs a normal sort of companion to balance him out, it's hard to see him wandering around with someone who's truly thick.

The fun continues at Miss Geraldine's Finishing Academy, and I like that this carries on from the last book - there's clearly an ongoing storyline here, which makes this series less episodic. (Not that there's anything wrong with episodic series!) As before, I think the dual nature of the education provided is the strength behind the story. At one point Sophronia notes, in a sort of aside, that aristocratic women are in the perfect position to be spies, what with education and access and the ability to blend in and obfuscate that the Finishing Academy provides. I also liked that the manipulation of the students by the teachers was in service of the idea that friendships between girls are valuable social resources - this is one series that has no truck with the idea that feminine things aren't valuable in their own right, and I really appreciate that. The one thing I don't particularly care for is the incipient love triangle. It's kept very much in the background - thankfully so, as the conspiracies are far more entertaining - but I will never enjoy a love triangle, and less so when the characters are young teens. Especially as I have a fair idea where it's going...

Reading this, I'm not surprised it turned out to be the juggernaut that it is. It's compulsively readable, and the biggest strength is Green's tone, which is absolutely unsentimental and often morbidly funny. Given that the story's told in first person, it really succeeds in making me feel for the protagonist. Hazel, young and terminal and painfully aware of the fact, is really a wonderful character. I enjoyed her so much, and I like how unflinchingly realistic the book is about her probable fate. There's no quick save coming, no tacked on happy ending, and her battle with cancer is going to end in one way only, and everybody knows it. Still, she's not one of those dying saintly types that comes up often in fiction of this type - she's angry and resentful and happy and hopeful all at once. She feels like a real person to me, in other words. Her love interest does not. Augustus is, well, I had a feeling early on he'd end up the way he did but it's not his fate that kept me from connecting with him. I just didn't find him believable as a character. Not remotely, and I don't really know why - except he seemed too polished, perhaps, and too consciously perfect. Like a very attractive mannequin with "tragic love interest" tattooed all over his face. The most adequate word I can think of to describe him is "plastic", and that, compared to Hazel's strong sense of reality, makes me far less interested in him and their relationship than I ever was in her.