octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

An interesting thing about this series is that it combines steampunk with the sort of creatures that you usually find in urban fantasy - but more as background colour than anything else. That is, the books feature vampires and werewolves, although I've not shelved the previous two in the series under "vampires" or "werewolves", because although such characters exist, and the jockeying between the various factions affects the politics of the world in question, they're never really the focus of the story. That changes in this book, as Sophronia's friend - the wonderful Sidheag - is brought to the fore. Sidheag, the daughter of a Scottish werewolf pack, is profoundly affected when that pack gets into trouble, and it's up to Sophronia and the rest of their friends to use their skills to help her. (I can only hope that in the next volume, it's the turn of poor under-rated Agatha to get the spotlight.)

While I continue to enjoy the series, I have zero interest in Sophronia's ongoing romantic struggles - if only the YA love triangle trope would die in a fire already! - and the increasing emphasis on this in her storyline is making me more attached to the secondary girls than I am to her. More of Dimity and Sidheag and Agatha, please, and far far less of Soap and Felix, for whom I do not care one single bit.

I came across this on a list I'm reading my way through, and I actually read the three collected volumes some time back, so this is just for my own records. The rating is an average of what I gave the individual books: Guilty Pleasures got three stars from me, mostly because I was impressed by the sense of pre-existing world. The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned, on the other hand, only merited two stars each. Basically, I found the same issues cropping up in all three books. Firstly, Anita seems remarkably (if inconsistently) thick. In the first book I figured out the culprit long before she did; in the third Richard's identity was so obvious Helen Keller could have picked up on it... but it took our heroine forever to grasp. Secondly, the villains have a habit of being initially and genuinely threatening - and then prone to making mistakes so basic it was no wonder they lost in the end. I mean, I really enjoyed the world-building, but the characters are beaten so often with the idiot stick that it can get a bit frustrating to read.

Short study that does what it says on the tin: looks at how the haunted house is presented in American popular culture. The author's main argument is that the contemporary American haunted house has been used as a means of criticising social priorities, for instance materialism and economic exploitation, by exploring how an unhealthy focus on these makes an individual vulnerable to the supernatural. This isn't a particularly original view, perhaps, but it is a valid one and Bailey supports it well.

He also successfully straddles the line between academic and popular criticism here, making this an immensely readable book. It helps, I think, that the study is limited and not exhaustive - Bailey focuses on a handful of popular examples, including The Amityville Horror, The Shining, and The Haunting of Hill House - and I often find that limited examples prove a point much better than exhaustive exploration, which can frequently muddy the focus by meandering off into byways. It's a really interesting and well-focused study, and I enjoyed reading it.

Appropriately ghoulish and bloody story about what happens to a group of investigators who foolishly - albeit for a great deal of money - go to investigate the most haunted house in the world. A house that has already destroyed two previous expeditions... but then haunted house narratives wouldn't be as fun as they are without the characters deliberately ignoring the giant red flags flapping desperately in their faces, trying to keep them from their upcoming and horrible deaths.

What separates Hell House from a lot of stories of its type is that there's real debate going on, throughout the book, as to what's causing the haunting. Often the story's set up in advance: this terrible thing happened, and that haunting is the result. And Hell House does have a terrible history, one acknowledged in advance - but exactly which part of that history, and which previous victim and/or perpetrator, are responsible here is one of the driving questions of the text. The answer's not exactly improbable - I think lots of readers will suspect correctly - but there's enough red herrings seeded throughout to keep things interesting. I'm not sure that the fix at the end is quite as convincing as the rest of it, and it irritates me that both women in the investigating party are primarily victimised sexually while the men are exploited and tormented in other ways, but it's still a fun read, if not reaching the subtlety and terrifying loveliness of Hill House, for example.

This book has, I think, the greatest opening paragraph of all time. Honestly, that paragraph is my favourite thing about it, and the rest of the book almost lives up to it. Jackson's prose is so restrained, punctuated with little bursts of loveliness, and it only exacerbates the horror. Because this is fundamentally a horror story, one about a haunted house, and it's genuinely frightening to see how Hill House undermines the sanity of its visitors. This is particularly the case with Eleanor, who if not really unstable to begin with has been beaten down by life, made vulnerable in any number of ways, and there's always that question, running underneath the text: is Hill House really to blame for what happens to her, or did she bring the haunting with her?

Oh, Peter Grant. I mostly love you, I do. I really enjoy your approach to community policing, your sense of humour, your friendly nature. You are the cop I would like to have as a mate... but like all mates, you've got a couple of topics that you'll bang on about forever, and whenever you talk about roads or transport (or trains!) my eyes glaze over instantly. I realise that you go on about this dreary shit because you care, and I get it: we all have hobbies that other people think are boring.

Luckily, this wee novella also has kidnapping and people stuffed in jars and river children and Abigail, who I'm pretty sure is bored by you and your endless mutterings on how to get about London too, sometimes.

Living on the other side of the world as I do, it's safe to say that the United States Supreme Court doesn't spend a lot of time on my radar. I know of it, of course, and occasionally news stories regarding it percolate down to New Zealand, but even I've heard of the most famous of its justices. And she's a fascinating woman. It's good to know more about her (can't say I'm that interested in learning more about some of her colleagues, though. Bad opinions travel faster than good.)

This book's a great introduction. Developed from a blog, I think, and it retains the chatty tone. Definitely not an academic read, but - no offense to RBG herself - law, for those of us not involved in making, breaking, or enforcing it - can sometimes seem tedious beyond belief. (You have to admit, law isn't often written about in clear or interesting ways.) This is an accessible text, is what I'm saying, and when the authors focus on a particular ruling, there are notes next to the reproduced portions of text that make plain what's actually going on. Really immensely readable biography, and well worth reading.

What the hell. Poor kind old Mrs. MacGregor, the housekeeper to all these children, used to be married to a thief, who ran off to do thieving things and left her alone for 40 odd years, never knowing if he were dead or alive. It turns out hubby has been living as a hermit, having stupidly swallowed a cock and bull story that his wife was dead (and even more stupidly failing to check, because the source of his info was criminal and vicious and oh, so trustworthy!). Four meddling children reunite them, and this is supposed to be a happy ending?!

All I can think is Mrs. MacGregor, who has missed out on her life and any potential family, has been screwed over but good.

This is so much more entertaining than The Cat in the Hat! I must admit at first I was troubled by this pushy little weirdo trying to shove rotten meat down someone else's throat - it must be mould that makes it so green, I thought. Because of this I was predisposed to side-eye it all and give a rating of three stars (even in my humourless state I did like the rhyme scheme, and as a learn-to-read book encompassing only 50 words the book is flat-out genius).

Then came the goat, and I gave in to the madness. I still think Sam-I-Am should not have been rewarded for his nagging ways, but then this is a children's book and I dare say having him beaten to death with his own rotten ham, while satisfying, would not be entirely appropriate.

Fun little picture book that contains five very short, very simple stories about friendship. Each story has a small moral, and moral stories about friendship could potentially be very tedious but this isn't - instead it's charming. Part of that's due, I think, to the illustrations, which are just so friendly and funny. (George and Martha are hippos, and I defy anyone to produce a cartoon of a hippo in a bathtub that isn't funny.) But mostly it's because, even though the two of them are always so kind and supportive of each other, they're not saccharine with it. "There is such a thing as privacy!" Martha cries, even among friends, after she catches George peeping at her while she's in the bath - and promptly batters him over the head with said bath. (Hippos are very strong.) George gets her back with the mirror trick, though, and I think the picture of him leaning into frame and sniggering is the best of the bunch.