octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I read and reviewed the two volumes collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating is an average of the individual ratings - I gave Heartless 2.5 stars, rounding up to 3 - it's my least favourite of the entire series, being a little too flippant overall. Timeless, on the other hand, got 3 stars. Honestly, I had my doubts that introducing a baby into the cast of characters would improve things, as it so rarely does, but the advantages of having a soulless protagonist, I suppose, is that Alexia's far less sentimental about things than the average heroine, so little Prudence is kept fairly subordinate within the narrative. Frankly, the best part about her is that she's largely being raised by Lord Akeldama instead of her biological parents, so the supernatural shenanigans are still front and centre. Given that's one of the most entertaining parts of this series for me, I was glad to see it unchanged.

I've read and reviewed all five books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The collection rating is an average of the individual ratings, and not a very difficult one at that. Basically, all of the books earned 3 stars from me, with the exception of Heartless, which got 2.5 rounded up to 3 because Goodreads does not traffic in half-stars.

Look, it's a fun series. Absolutely undemanding, but you know, not everything has to be a challenge to consume; sometimes I just want literary popcorn. Light and fluffy, and this series absolutely succeeds there. It's also got interesting world-building and a very strong cast of secondary characters (who are frequently more entertaining than the protagonist, herself likeable enough). The tone is for the most part amusingly flippant, though this does upon occasion get pushed to the ridiculous and undermines any attempt to take more serious plot points seriously. The biggest problem, for me, was the romance. (The first book's really the only one I classified as "paranormal romance", although the relationship continues throughout.) I had the same problem with Carriger's Finishing School prequel series. I seem to find her romances terribly unconvincing. Still, I just rolled my eyes and went on with it, because the books are likeable, frothy fun even so.

3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. The great strength of this novel is the clarity with which Forster perceives the act of colonialism in India. He shows its effects on individuals, and none of it is good. The colonised become exploited and degraded, and the colonisers degrade themselves, becoming ever more prejudiced and insular in order to justify their own behaviour. It's a really biting piece of literature in that way; the more I read on, the more I was interested in the friendship between Fielding and Aziz, and the more Forster argued that such a friendship could not continue. They could feel affection for each other, yes, but the divide colonisation has put between them is inescapable, and the book ends on the note that true friendship between them is impossible while colonisation continues. Which is awful, and yet I suspect depressingly accurate.

What's dropping this book down from 4 stars entirely is that it's just so cloudy. Deliberately so, I suspect - ambiguity is an essential part of its make-up. Miss Quested's experience in the Marabar Caves is never fully explained, but then it doesn't have to be... it's the repercussions, the settling into sides, that Forster is concerned with. But in service of this idea his prose meanders and goes on little tangents and I can enjoy wandering prose, I can, but although I enjoyed the cool appraisal of his approach I didn't warm to his language enough to enjoy the wandering here... every so often I just wanted to reach into page, shake him, and say "Would you just get on with it?!" A book to admire rather than love I think. I don't see myself in any great hurry to read it again, that's for sure.

This starts out really interesting and then takes a hard turn into tiresome crap. I enjoyed the first half of the book, especially Stephen's childhood experiences, and I thought Joyce's prose worked well with the sort of dreamy, cloudy, half-comprehension of memory and young life. There was something about his language that was so full of movement and life. Then, around the middle of the book, appeared a lengthy detour into the nature of hell and the possibility of religious vocation, which got more tiresome the longer it banged on. Come Stephen's university experience, however, and I was wishing for more lectures on the nature of hell, because the philosophical windbaggery of Stephen and his fellow students was not only pompous as all get out, but it was also excruciatingly dull. That lovely easy prose was forced into badly fitting pontification and it did not suit either it or me. This was not helped by the fact that I did not care about a single character or what happened to them. (Early interest in Stephen petered out as he quickly turned into an insufferable prig.)

All in all: fantastic start, but by the end I just wanted it to be over.

The first of the Foundation series and possibly the best, this is really a collection of five related novellas, presented in chronological order. The real attraction here is the idea: Asimov posits a mathematical analysis that can accurately predict social movement, in this case the fall and ultimate resurrection of a galactic empire. This science of psychohistory works entirely on the macro level; applicable only to populations, and increasing in accuracy the larger that population is, while being very nearly hopeless, consequently, at predicting individual movement. The tension between these two things, and the attempts by a group of scientists to mitigate the worst of the coming disaster, is genuinely compelling. It's an always enjoyable read, and I've read it several times by now. My only issue is the constantly reoccurring surprise - I always seem to forget between reads - at the absolute lack of female characters. The book always bangs on about how many millions and trillions of people there are in the affected worlds, and half of them seem not to exist at all. It's a very strange current in an otherwise estimable work.

Enormously well-researched biography of Eleanor Roosevelt; this first volume covers her life up until FDR was elected President. It's compulsively readable - once you get past the inbred Roosevelt genealogy of the first chapter, anyway, which was in dire need of a family tree to try and distinguish all the relations - even for someone like me who knew pretty much nothing about ER and needed everything explained.

It's also extraordinarily sympathetic, and I'm not sure if this is helped or hindered by the author's refusal to overtly cast a great deal of judgement. Flaws aren't papered over - Eleanor's or anyone else's - but I'm afraid that didn't stop me from judging. There are times you just want to reach into pages and give someone a good slap. Not so much Eleanor, although her anti-Semitism and other racist proclivities deserved it (though I am holding off a little as I understand she addresses that aspect of herself and improves in volume 2 of the biography... we shall see). But the people around her who variously refused to give credit where it was due and looked down upon her for having interests outside of her prescribed role as wife and mother. Her sons, in particular, come across here as patronising little shits, as does her often oblivious husband and horribly interfering mother-in-law. Frankly, Eleanor doesn't seem to have had a great deal of luck in her near relations, although there are some shocking passages that make her early attempts at motherhood seem pretty bloody grim. Half the wider family seem hopeless alcoholics anyway, so I suppose at least she escaped that.

But that sense of sympathy derives, I think, largely from the sense of a clearly enormously talented woman who came very close to having all the life and capability sucked out of her. Her growing recognition of her own talent for politics, and her relationships with other women in forwarding the feminist agenda was pretty much the saving grace. Surprisingly - at least to me, because I was as ignorant of American political history as I was of ER herself - that agenda forced forward, against all opposition, a lot of the labour and social welfare reforms that we take as standard today, but which were perceived as genuinely radical back then. I have to say, though, watching the politicians in power ignore, criticise, betray, and exploit the women activists of the day is looking ever more familiar...

Really excellent short collection. Is it even possible for Butler to write something that I don't like? Because it's looking ever more unlikely with each book of hers that I read. The two stand-outs here are, of course, "Bloodchild", and I think "Amnesty". I know the last isn't one of the major award winners collected here, but it's really outstandingly good and, like "Bloodchild", explores the compromises of living within a system that can't be changed. We like to think - and science fiction as a genre tends to encourage this - that there is no conflict we can't out-think, no invasion we can't fight, but sometimes defeat and compromise is the only realistic option we have. And it's awful, and degrading, but Butler always keeps the chance for dignity in it as well.

You know, I spend more time than is probably healthy considering what shelves to put things under on Goodreads, and when I went to look at the most popular shelves for this book, well. There's so much variation! Apparently more people consider this chick-lit than they do thriller, and more people consider it mystery than either. For me, mysteries tend to conjure up sleepy little villages and Miss Marple; they certainly don't have psychotic rapist boxers and drug running and exploding stolen cars. So, thriller it is... but it's funny, as well. And that's such an odd combination. How many funny thrillers do you run in to? I think this is my first.

But, you know what, I liked it. It's a fun, easy read and it's the first book in a series and I'm going to read more of them. There are lots of them to read. And maybe there's lots because combining humour and thriller is an unusual but clearly marketable (and entertaining!) combination. Good for the author. And good for me, who has had my genre horizons expanded.

This is a terrible thing to say, but if I were Christopher's mother I would want to leave him too. Yes, this book shows him as brave and intelligent and good, and I was genuinely invested in him succeeding in both getting to London and taking his A levels, but the sheer miserable grind of living with him, the death of all spontaneity and creativity and social life, lest it cause a screaming fit... I understand that having a child like Christopher is one of the risks you take on when having children, but that is one of the many, many reasons I do not want children. I couldn't cope with him. The book's fairly short but by the end I'd already had enough.

Haddon's done a very good job, though - at least from my own ignorant perspective - in portraying someone who is non-neurotypical. Christopher felt convincing, as did the people around him. I also thought that Haddon did a good job writing on multiple levels. What Christopher understood, and what the reader understood, was happening in his family was definitely different. Children are often unreliable narrators at the best of times, but that tendency was really emphasised here, and to good effect. I have to say, though, I ended the book feeling most sympathy for Mrs. Shears, who lost both her horrible husband and her dog, to the same damn family, and never got any justice or compensation for either.

This is an outstandingly beautiful picture book. I was giving a reading today, with a bunch of other authors - it being National Flash Fiction Day in NZ - and the event was in a bookshop and I got there early to browse. And I saw this, and I didn't read it really because it's a wordless picture book, but I gaped at it from beginning to end and when I was finished I put it back on the shelf for all of three seconds before snatching it back, because I simply couldn't bear the idea of going home without it.

It's a very simple story. A girl, her dad, and their dog are shipwrecked on an island which is not an island (see cover). The giant turtle takes pity on them, supporting them until they come across a boat that can rescue them. It's the start of a beautiful friendship and so on, but I don't even care about that so much when the illustrations are this astonishing. They're filled with colour and wonder and are just so immediately delightful the whole thing is impossible to resist.