octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This isn't exactly a placeholder issue, what with the escape and all, and the emphasis on Kinsey is due. The first three issues focus on the three kids, and I can see why - Hill is getting the main characters set up for the readers. Emotionally, it feels a little like a placeholder, though. That doesn't really sound fair, as Kinsey has as much of a right to her trauma as the other two, but there's a small sense of repetition... mostly with the first issue. Kinsey and Ty are much older than Bode, and their responses, by virtue of their age, are more similar than that of their younger brother.

There's also less focus on the house here, and I really enjoy creepy, weird house stories (is the place actually haunted?) so hopefully there's more of that coming. 

It's fast-paced and easy to zip through, which is about the best that can be said. It's not that the book's bad, but there's not a lot of meat here of any kind. Yeah, it's a kids' book, but the antagonist is particularly thin, and it's too easily wrapped up at the end. Also, I know that kids' books often find ways to get the parents out of the way pretty quick, but you can't tell me that Benjamin Sisko of all people would watch a ship with his kidnapped child zoom away from DS9 and go, essentially, "Eh, let's sort this out diplomatically." I don't think so - he'd be following that warp trail in less time than it takes me to write this review.

I remember reading another one of these junior DS9 novels, and he was an extraordinarily indifferent parent there as well. Now, Star Trek has its share of useless parents but trying to frame Sisko - of all people! - that way beggars belief. 

I've finally finished this tie-in collection of stories from the Rivers of London series, which is good as it's due back at the library today. It's likeable enough but a mixed bag generally; I think I prefer the novels, and I say that as a dedicated short story reader.

The strength of the Rivers series, for me, has always been the voice: Peter Grant is warm and funny and suspicious, and his characterisation is genuinely appealing. In the novels, that appeal is in service of (generally) well-developed plot. That's not so much the case here. Aaronovitch is not what I'd call a natural short story writer... his strength clearly lies in longer pieces. There's a tendency to an abrupt, awkward end, which is admittedly evident in only some of the stories here, and in others the plot, or points of the plot, are not that well-developed. Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy a lot of the work here, and it's a solid three stars out of five, but I probably won't pick it up again. 

Another fragmentary sort of piece that can't really stand on its own - it only has any meaning when related to the rest of the series. Which is fine, I guess, but if a short can't stand on its own then what's the point? Honestly, I think these moments should have been scrapped or expanded. One doesn't have to publish everything. 

Another very short piece, but this time it's actually a story rather than a fragment, which makes it more satisfying to read. Actually, it reads as if it could be the introduction to a novel. From what the author says, such is not likely to eventuate, but there is some semblance of plot and motivation, so, you know, it's an improvement on the associated Nightingale piece. 

"Moments is a term used by Ben Aaronovitch for very short works of fiction, that he doesn't like to call short stories. He adds that they are not likely to be incorporated into any longer work."

So says the blurb. Look, it's pleasant enough but very slight, and scraps like this might do better staying in the drafts or the deleted folder. It's more of a vignette than a story. 

Oh, this one's fun. I do like it when urban fantasy turns up in unexpected places, and a small farm is, by virtue of being rural, one of those places. Nonetheless, here we are, and the obsessive type of farmer illustrated here is deeply entertaining. An infant river deity turns up in a field, hailed by prophetic foxes? Well, the boy needs a home, and think what he could do for the soil matrix!

It's like Country Calendar but with gods. There was an episode on a couple of weeks ago about raising baby vines for vineyards. I don't think Dionysus is turning up in rural New Zealand any time soon, but you never know. 

I think I could read a whole novel of Vanessa puttering around her parents' place at Christmas time, just wandering the local woods and searching for evidence of the supernatural, armed with schnapps and gingerbread. It's very unlike it in everything else, but it has that Christmassy effect that I always get from Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising which, since it is nearly that time of year again, I shall soon be pulling out for my annual read.

Also, the neighbours are holding a Christmas party in a few weeks, and I promised to bring gingerbread. I do like gingerbread. 

This was pretty cool - a collection of speculative fiction (plus a couple of essays) themed around social justice movements. It is named, of course, for Octavia Butler, who has never written a book I didn't love; the works here follow in her example. It's a fantastic idea for a collection, and the execution broadly lives up to it.

There were, it has to be said, a small handful of pieces here that I just bounced off. These are far overshadowed by the rest of the book, however. A lot of the stories here are good. Some are absolutely excellent, and the effect of them all together is compelling. Of my favourites, though... I really enjoyed "Revolution Shuffle" by Bao Phi (liberating American internment camps amidst a zombie outbreak); "The Token Superhero" by David F. Walker (navigating superhero status while Black); "Black Angel" by Walidah Imarisha (a fallen angel intervenes in police brutality); "The Long Memory" by Morrigan Phillips (memory keepers are isolated and brutalised in order to remove social safeguards); and "Runway Blackout" by Tara Betts (shapeshifting models refuse to conform to imposed beauty standards). As you can see, there's a fantastic range of approaches here, and that's something I find very appealing. That's the advantage to an anthology over a collection, a lot of the time - there are so many different authors coming from so many different perspectives that there's bound to be something for everyone. 

I'm reading through the stories in the Tales from the Folly collection, and while I'm enjoying them, I'm noticing that Aaronovitch has the habit of some fairly abrupt ends in his stories. Not in all of them, to be fair, but it's happened more than I'd like and it kind of makes me want to reach into the pages and say "But what about this bit?" Granted, he's probably not that interested in how Abigail explains everything to Babs, but being hired by her to investigate the weird uncle was how the story got started to begin with!

Babs deserves a little more for her forty pounds, is what I'm saying.