octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

A mostly enjoyable end to this particular sub-series; together with volume #5 it's the best of the bunch. Although the Enterprise crew isn't the real focus here, the characterisation, when they do show up, is excellent. Scotty shepherding a new commander through a disaster, Uhura completely outwitting a charismatic criminal, and Spock falling into difficulties without the presence of Dr. McCoy to balance out his tendency to excess. The characterisation in the main story is also good. Frustrating, but I think it's meant to be frustrating - up to a point at least. First officer Keller, of a new ship assigned to Belle Terre, has an insane captain, and he needs to get over his loyalty to the man long enough to mutiny.

Reader, I want to smack him. Captain Lake is clearly off his rocker, and the entire crew knows it. It's not Lake's fault - he's was exposed to a chemical that affected his neurology. But the why doesn't matter, as he's putting his crew in constant danger through a series of dreadful decisions, and more than one of the officers essentially beg Keller to take over. But for ages, for far more time than is credible, he minces and whines and angsts, and the upshot of his whole stupid prevarication is that the crew is pretty much slaughtered and the ship destroyed. And you know, for a very short while there I forgave the angst. Primarily because although Keller fucked up majorly, he knows it, and for a few pages the text knows it too... then he picks himself up and dusts himself off for the hero finish, at which point he's rewarded with a field promotion and command and all I can think is What the fucking fuck? How about promoting one of those officers who did realise trouble and was ready to act at the time, instead of the man whose inaction, both at the time Lake was contaminated and at the time he was insane, condemned an entire ship to horrible death. I think I'm supposed to be glad that the lesson paid by others was finally pounded into Keller's thick bloody head, but I'm pretty unconvinced by this apparent lightning redemption. Why does everyone keep trusting this moron? He failed pitifully as first officer, and suddenly he's failing up. He doesn't need a promotion, he needs a court martial for sheer incompetence. For someone who keeps dropping twentieth century references, "just following orders" is the one reference he absolutely fails to acknowledge.

I wonder, though, if my reaction is due in part to the pacing. It's off in more than this storyline - too much time on Keller's refusal to act, too little on earning trust back. The most egregious example is the ending of the book proper, which is almost entirely deus ex machina, after a powerful alien race comes along to set things almost instantly to rights. That's not a trope that delights many, and I'm one of the many. Still, for all my paragraphs of rant here, this was still a likeable enough read and, as I said, one of the two best books of the New Earth series.

The conclusion to the series, and it's just as enjoyable as the rest of it. I was glad to see that both Agatha and Monique were given more prominent roles - Agatha's always been the wallflower, and Monique too flatly antagonistic, and both these roles were finally subverted here, which not before time. And I continue to love Dimity. This series has always been quite strong on the supporting characters, to the point where I'm almost less interested in Sophronia than the rest, although that could be because I consistently find her romantic entanglements the least interesting part of the plot. Here, fortunately, she spends a lot of time in action-mode around the giant dirigible, which is far more entertaining. All in all, though, while I'm a little sad there aren't any more volumes in the series, it seems like a good place to finish it. And maybe the characters here will turn up in the Parasol Protectorate series, of which I've only read the opening volume thus far. That would be fun.

It has to be said, the edition I'm reading has a particularly dreadful cover. Really awful - the book's not great but it doesn't deserve that horror. I don't know what the publishers were thinking; it's anachronistic and extremely unattractive. Anyway, moving on... this one wasn't as likeable as the last two. Alanna remains the strong point - I like her combination of kindness and practicality, her work ethic, and her constant willingness to learn new things, even (especially) when they're not martial. Her interest in weaving, for example. It makes for a rounded character and I enjoy that.

What I did not enjoy were the relationships around her. The love triangle going on in this series was never going to grab me, as I loathe love triangles, but in this volume it becomes particularly irritating. Jonathan, a previously decent character, has taken a hard turn into jerk. And Alanna's brother Thom is also an irritant, messing with powers beyond and all that, and you know what? I liked him when he was a nerdy kid who plotted with his sister, who valued their relationship, instead, again... jerk. This is what comes of offing the antagonist halfway through a series; it has to undermine existing characters to continue some semblance of plot. Not a fan.

Ridiculously bizarre and deeply entertaining story about a man called Ignatius J. Reilly, who if this book were written today would no doubt be presented as an incel. A pustule on the face of humanity, he doesn't quite live in his mother's basement but it's very close, failing life and all sorts of social relationships, covering his bedroom with pieces of badly written crap because, as is always the case with this type, Nobody Understands His Genius. Monstrously self-obsessed, possessing an enormous vocabulary with absolutely no common sense, lazy, filthy, cowardly, he's a fantastic character. I couldn't feel even an iota of sympathy for him, he's so very unpleasant, but sometimes you just have to wallow in the urge to point and laugh and this hideous creation, this weaselly, self-pitying abomination of a man - the type to suck the jelly out of jelly doughnuts and put the fragments of dough back in the box - fulfils his role of target admirably.

It's very, very funny.

Two and a half stars, rounding up to three. It's an improvement on the last volume, certainly, and Jonathan is back to his normal self. The characterisation seems more consistent with the first two books in the series anyway. Irritatingly, there's yet another love interest thrown into the mix, this time a martial artist who, as characters in this series are wont to do, teaches Alanna fancy new skills and it's getting a bit eye-roll-worthy at this point. Granted, one of the strengths of Alanna's personality is that she tries new things and is always learning, but she does tend to run across expert tutors in fantastic abilities on the regular... and she picks up everything so quickly that she begins to feel like one of those video game characters who are close to maxing out on all abilities. On the whole I far preferred Pierce's Beka Cooper series, I think... the difficulty level just seems much harder there.

I actually read and reviewed all volumes in this collection separately, so this is basically just a note for my own records. The three star rating is an average of what I gave the individual entries, all of which were three star reads themselves apart from The Woman Who Rides Like A Man, which only got two due to sudden and inconsistent characterisation of two of the supporting characters, who turn into jerks for no reason. On the whole, though, it's an enjoyable enough series, and the real strength of it lies in the main character. Alanna really is likeable - kind and brave and hardworking - and she bypasses the "not like other girls" trope by valuing typically feminine things as well as her role as a warrior, because she's perfectly capable of appreciating a pretty dress and being good with a sword. On the other hand, her accumulation of incredible talents becomes ever more unbelievable, and there's an irritating love triangle which lasts until the final book, where yet another love interest is added (love quadrilateral?). No matter how many people were involved, I didn't like it, anyway. I swear, love polygons of any description are the scourge of YA. Would love to read a series without one.

What a wonderful collection of fiction! And though there's a wide range in the stories, most are linked by - as the introduction states - a focus on sensuality that's very welcome in genre fiction. I liked all the stories, but the stand-outs for me were "Desire", which I actually read in an anthology a few weeks back; "Pod Rendezvous", which creates an almost hive-like sense of alien community without being the least bit insectile; and the absolute best, "Rosamojo", which is going on my list of favourite shorts ever, about a girl who kills her sexually abusive father and has to grapple with issues of forgiveness and hurt when his ghost comes along to, among other things, apologise for his actions. It's short and punchy and that mix of sad-angry that turns up sometimes. It's fantastic.

It's all just a really well put together collection. There's a little sort of sub-series of stories in there, of alien creatures who come to Earth to feed on humans and be seduced by them, and how Salaam uses language, in these stories particularly, is just so interesting. Language, of course, is a way of defining (and distancing) the foreign, and simultaneously making connections with that foreign, and how it's used here to echo the themes of alienation and coming together is so clever. The whole book's just so inventive and imaginative, I'm really glad I've got my own copy.

I saw the film of this years ago, and never realised that it was from a graphic novel. But there that novel was, in the library, looking the size of a brick and, despite the recommendation I had to read it, I wasn't entirely looking forward to it (see: size of a brick). Then I saw all the pictures and was happier. And really, these pencil illustrations are both effective and interesting. They're fairly simple, essentially shadings of black and white, but they tell a genuinely likeable story. Young Hugo is an orphan, who scurries through the walls of a Parisian train station, taking care of the clocks his uncle used to maintain before said uncle stumbled off in a drunken haze to who-knows-where leaving poor Hugo to fend for himself. It's the station that caught my attention most of all - I don't know if it's actually true that there are all these secret passages, or if Selznick is merely using dramatic license, but either way a secret passage will always, always have my attention.

What's most impressive though, I think, is just how much is packed in here. There's really not that much text to go alongside the drawings, but still, crammed in, is the history of French cinema, clocks, automatons, secret legacies and two children finding each other and becoming friends. And it all comes together perhaps a little too neatly, but as a whole the book just goes to show that even a complicated story can be told simply and well, with a minimum of waffle.

This is charming. It's based, according to an author's note at the back, on a Yiddish folk song that's basically about recycling useless things into something else. In this instance, a worn-out coat gets made into a jacket, then a waistcoat, then a scarf, and so on. Which is all nice enough, but the stand-out element of the book are the illustrations. They're a sort of bright patchwork cut-out mix (I'm not an artist, if there's a name for this type of thing I don't know it). Anyway, they're wonderful.

Fun picture book about counting, with the numbers presented in both English and Spanish. Anyway, as the story goes, Granny is on death's door and Death turns up to collect. He's a walking skeleton, very polite, but Granny keeps putting him off with household chores she has to do before she can shuffle off this mortal coil with him. You can guess the sort of thing - one house to sweep, two pots of tea to boil, three pounds of corn to make into tortillas and so on. And it's all very good-natured and entertaining, and the illustrations are fun, but all I can think is the little prospective readers can't count to ten but they're perfectly fine with the concept of death?

Granted, I never spend any time with children. What they grasp and at which stage of their development they grasp it is beyond me. But don't basic numbers come before "So, death is a thing and it's coming for Granny"? Not in this book! Here, kids who haven't yet learned their numbers are presumably expected to be already competent with the idea of mortality. As I said, maybe it's just me, and I can't pretend I didn't enjoy the seeming disconnect. But still, I don't remember The Very Hungry Caterpillar ending with a coffin instead of a chrysalis...