octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Enjoyable short story about a scam artist working as a psychic, who gets drawn into a potentially deadly family conflict. Either the mother or the stepson has murderous intent, and behind both is the idea of the haunted house, which either suspect may be using as a means to advance their own agenda. There's a lot of reference to haunted house narratives here, but it's all a bit too clever. I know my haunted house stories, and all those references do is make clear the construction that underlines the narrative. I'm trying to be a little oblique here, because of spoilers, but suffice to say that because of all this seeding, the twist is just not that much of a surprise. It would have been subtler, I think, to name the kid Miles and get rid of all of the other literary in-jokes. One is enough.

Easy to read biography of Kathleen Kennedy (sister to JFK) who died at 28 in a plane crash. All credit to the author, her prose is certainly likable. Often biographies can tend to dryness, but this doesn't at all. On the other hand, the reason that biographies can tend to dryness is they often have a lot of ground to cover, and biographies tend to have as their subjects persons of note, with substantial achievements that often need quite a bit of explanation. Kick doesn't have that. It's the story of a pleasant young woman, who married well and briefly (her husband was killed in action in WW2 shortly after their marriage). Aside from the status of that husband - destined, before his death, to be the Duke of Devonshire - and her own famous family, there's not really a great deal to single Kathleen out. As a result the bulk of this book is really descriptions of holiday parties attended by a wealthy young woman. I'm not saying this isn't enjoyable to read, but it is a bit slight. One wonders if she'd merit a biography without the famous name attached - but then perhaps biographies shouldn't be so limited in scope. Not that Kathleen Kennedy could ever be described as an ordinary person, exactly - her background and connections preclude that - but this uncritically approving biography is perhaps an example of the value in recording how all sorts of people lived, and that includes the relatives of high achievers.

I know the character are in their late teens but this feels so much more like a children's series to me. And I don't mean that as denigration - ten year old me would have loved this, I think, and that's not denigration either! It's just so light and happy and you can be certain, reading, that even the bad things that happen will be fixed without a great deal of trouble or violence. The evil wizards, for example, are vanquished with buckets of soapy water mixed with lemon juice, and even then the melting is only temporary and they'll be back to their nefarious shenanigans in the next volume.

It's all just so friendly, and I enjoy the subversive nature of the two main characters. Fairy tales come with certain expectations, and both Cimorene and Mendanbar are sick of living up to the sillier, less reasonable beliefs that princesses and kings are meant to embody. Their quiet determination to go their own way is mirrored in many of the little references to typical story plots that have gone just a little bit skewed - the dwarf of the Rumpelstiltskin story, who cares very strongly for the children he ends up saddled with, the Wicked Uncle who's actually very fond of his nephew the prince, the dragon who wants stew and chocolate mousse to eat as opposed to human beings... it's what you'd expect from fairy tales if they were inhabited by people of good sense and general kindness. I think, in my review, I described the first volume as "good-natured", and honestly, that's still the best word I can think of to describe the series thus far.

Utterly good-natured fantasy story in which a princess, fed up with the expectation that she'll marry the prince of a neighbouring kingdom, runs away from her responsibilities in order to be a dragon's princess instead. In the stories, this tends to end up with the princess in question being rescued by a prince, but as Cimorene's doing her best to get away from princes, it means taking on the job of aide to a magical creature. She has to keep the cave clean, sort all the dragon's treasures and library books - teaching herself magic as she does - and cook for the dragon. The last is less piles of roast meat than buckets of chocolate mousse and - Cimorene's signature dish - cherries jubilee. She enjoys herself thoroughly, until local wizards start interfering in the dragon hierarchy, wanting to replace the dragon king with a dragon more amenable to their interests. Suddenly Cimorene's predilection for doing things differently comes to be very useful indeed... It's a fun, easy read, with a sensible, friendly heroine and a wry sense of humour. Happy endings abound.

The kids are back playing at the uranium mine again, and clearly the stupidity has numbed my brain because I'm less shocked at it than I was last time. Except now a whole town has sprung up around the mine, including the family of an old friend of Benny's, headed up by a single mum who likes to bake what are no doubt radioactive pies. Fine, whatever - at least I'm not eating them. But radioactive pie family has their house burned down, and figuring out who did it is the not-very-interesting mystery at the centre of the story. (You would think it was burned down by people who don't want glow-in-the-dark pies, but you'd be wrong.) It gains a star on the last volume because after Madame Curie's pink baking shack is burned down, all the neighbours get together to build her and her kids a new house, and replace her furniture and so on, and I do appreciate the kindness even if I don't care for the cooking. I will say, though, that maybe the neighbours don't care for it either, because the new dwelling they build doesn't have a bathroom. (Where's this woman washing herself before she makes her death pies? NOWHERE.)

Lovely, warm little collection of letters between an American writer and a British bookseller. Hanff, on a budget and unwilling to traipse endlessly through the streets of New York looking for obscure titles in second-hand shops, starts sending orders to a bookshop in London. Frank Doel, her correspondent, has quite by chance the same sort of humour and the two begin a sort of book-based penpal friendship - one that expands to Doel's family and workmates as Banff begins to send parcels of food to the bookshop, as they're all living under rationing following the war. The correspondence goes on for some decades, and sadly they never actually meet in person, but it's still the story of two very kind people who form an unlikely friendship and take delight in it.

If this doesn't have the wit and humour of Pride and Prejudice, it's still an extremely entertaining read - albeit one that's soaked in misery for a good part of it. With the best will in the world I can't feel that much for Edward Ferrars. I mean, his whole stupid family needs to fall off a cliff, that's plainly obvious, but all this talk of honour as he ruins his own life... granted I'm speaking from a different time, but I have no sympathy. Colonel Brandon is far more interesting, and if Marianne's change in feelings isn't especially convincing then I'm still more interested in them than I am in Elinor and her idiot (not that Brandon doesn't deserve Marianne's affection, but the end of the novel is fairly compressed and more successful in satirising the extended Ferrars family than in tying up the romances, I think). It's true that Marianne suffers from excess of sensibility, and I think there are times she must be very difficult not to roll eyes at, but Elinor's sense, in comparison, can make her come across as a little dry. I suppose she and Edward deserve each other - they can be smugly and rationally prim together.

The best of the New Earth subseries thus far, and a vast improvement on the last two volumes. Rusch's book succeeds where they failed; that there are no problems with pacing is a great relief and makes for a far less stodgy reading experience. Similarly, this story isn't padded out with repetition and waffle... it's just a short tight novel with a clear focus, with characters taking centre stage instead of technobabble. I do think there's some failure with the science, and not enough focus on how the remaining ecology will respond to the suffocation resulting from the attack on the soil - plant cells need to respire, and they're not going to recover as easily as Thin Air suggests after being deprived of atmosphere for so long, for example - but even so it's a readable, likeable book.

I'm in two minds about this book. For thoughtfulness and originality it probably deserves four stars. For enjoyable readability it's more like two. I've compromised on three, but really it's two and a half, rounding up.

The ideas here are interesting. The sheer scale of the story, the way it's put together as a mix of report and diary and explanation, over multiple species and multiple planets and in both life and afterlife... this is something to really challenge the reader, and I tend to appreciate books that do that. But it's just so fucking turgid. The pacing is dire (especially in the first half), and the characters are admirable but largely unattractive. George, for example, is supposed to be some paragon that everyone can't help but follow, but mostly he seems to me smugly tiresome and in need of a good slap. His sister Rachel, far more flawed, is also far more interesting and the only character I actually gave a damn about - the substantial portion of the book that is her diary is the most enjoyable part of it, and I genuinely did enjoy her sections.

Lessing has written other books that I've liked far more. This is the most ambitious of the lot, and it's not I think nearly as successful as the rest I've read. I can't help but wonder what would change if she wrote it today... how much refinement and clarity could be put into it. (It's in dire need of both.) Even so, there are still flashes of the extraordinary here... worth reading, perhaps, but once is enough.

My least favourite Gaiman novel thus far. It does have things that I enjoy - primarily Daisy the cop and Rosie's awful-but-amusing mother. I also liked Fat Charlie, albeit mildly, and how he grew and changed over the course of the book. As well, Gaiman's tone is consistently entertaining. I've never found him as funny as Pratchett, but there's still a dry sense of the ridiculous in here and I always like that. But I can't get over the fact that Spider is a rapist and is never called on it - hell, he ends up in a relationship with his victim because she loves him anyway, despite the fact that he fucked her while pretending to be his twin brother, the man she was actually engaged to. There's never any real consequence for this, it's treated more as a mild bit of naughtiness, and it kind of makes me want to gag.