octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Grandfather boots the kids out of the house for another trip, sending them on a cycling holiday to their aunt's house. On the way they find a lost dog, and the rest of the trip is dedicated to finding the dog's owner and returning him to them. Of course they succeed, but I enjoyed that for once - criminal lurkings in the background aside - in this case the dog really was lost, which is a very mild mystery but also an understandable one. Far more mysterious is four children volunteering to do a stranger's housework, which I suspect is meant to come across as kindness and goodwill to all, but which skirts the line of mildly disturbing. (Next stop Stepford, perhaps?)

I think what I like best about Barry's work is that it's so rooted in childishness. The illustrations help with this - they almost look like child's drawings, sometimes, and I think it must take a lot of work to get them looking so apt for the subject matter. The comics here are bits and scraps of memories from childhood, complete with noxious cousins, schoolyard squabbles, and lots of random things of interest to a kid - growing bean plants, destroying toys, playing with a dog, the excitement of a parade. The thing is, it's all immensely recognisable, and the conceit, throughout the book, that the understanding of the narrator is limited is almost total. We can see, as readers, the undercurrents and implications that the kids are just not aware of, and that gives such an interesting tension - even a sting, at times - at the close of some of these comics.

It's just all very, very clever.

Jackson Winters is broken out of jail to steal a ghost. There's a haunted house scheduled for demolition, and his new employer is one of those creepy collector types wealthy enough to hire a bunch of people to cater to his dodgy desires. Only one of these people is even slightly interesting, and that's Oliver the sceptic, but really the characterisation here is so paper thin, so poorly integrated and so resting on the most overdone of tropes that it's hardly worth distinguishing one individual from the others. When Anderson gives the reason for her loyalty to the creepy old guy, I just rolled my eyes. The plot, sadly, isn't any better. All in all it's a very basic idea that's just not very well executed.

In some ways this is a really fragmented collection. The art styles vary, especially in the first comic collected here. The story moves in non-linear ways, jumps from character to character, and there's one comic in the middle where there's not really a plot at all, just a series of weird events as more people are drawn into what's happening with the keys. (Which is very vague, I know, but I'm trying not to give away anything here!)

It's all so fragmented, and yet it just works. Honestly, the thought of how many times this had to be written and rewritten to balance all the elements out just makes me shudder, because this is such a complex little puzzle of a book, and integrating all its aspects - the plot and the character development and the little emotional beats that it hits on a regular basis - must have been diabolically difficult. I admired it as much as I enjoyed it, is what I'm saying. I did think that final twist, with what happened to Bode, was a trifle overdone, but still. This is so much better than Haunted Heist, the (unrelated) comic collection I read a couple of days ago. It's just in an entirely different league.

The story continues, and Tohru gets some actual female friends, which is nice. One of them is pretty bland, but the other's a creepy, possibly psychic girl who is actually very entertaining. I'd far rather read about her than the repetitive angst of the two teen boys Tohru lives with, but they're becoming slightly more tolerable as they become slightly less self-obsessed, actually looking up from their own constant whining to notice that other people have problems too.

There's also a backstory building up with regards to the shapeshifters. A few more are introduced, and the community that they live in is fleshed out a little more - including an (as yet unseen) character, in control of them all, who comes across as both threatening and kind of abusive. Complicating this is the magical ability to wipe Tohru's memory if she steps out of line, so no wonder the poor girl's sticking to her key personality trait, which is a mixture of relentless optimism and doormat.

Don't get me wrong: I do like the emphasis on kindness and hard work and doing one's best. It's just "Pollyanna" appears to be Tohru's one personality trait, and it's not enough.

I don't read a lot of manga, and I wanted to start trying some, and this has a good reputation so I thought I'd give it a go. It was okay. The main character's a school girl living in a tent after her mum dies, and she's taken in by a local family to help out with housework instead of paying rent. When I say "help out", I mean she's essentially employed as cook, cleaner, and emotional support animal for men who can't get their act together. It's all honestly a bit dodgy, as this actual child is basically being exploited because she's got nowhere else to go.

Complicating it all is that the family are shapeshifters, and change into signs of the zodiac whenever someone of the opposite sex hugs them, and I really cannot fathom how reproduction works here, and have spent frankly too long trying. But I digress... a sort of found family develops, which is mildly interesting, but for the life of me I can't tell Rat and Cat and their endless goddamn issues apart. Nor do I, honestly, care that much. I'm mostly interested in the protagonist, who is dementedly optimistic on a level that makes Pollyanna look suicidal. I can only think it's survival mechanism in her case, though...

The first half of this was excellent - within the restrictions Wallace-Wells sets out for himself, anyway. He seems entirely uninterested about the effects of climate on nonhuman life, so long as those effects don't impact humanity in any way. That, frankly, shows a paucity of wonder and a level of self-interest that my biologist self finds extremely off-putting. It does not effect, however, the structure of that first half, which is clearly organised and referenced to within an inch of its life. The consequences of climate change on human society are profound, and are laid out here in an extremely convincing way. (At least, I hope it is convincing, but I tend to think this book's preaching to the converted when what's needed is to reach the insular mindsets of those that haven't yet grasped the magnitude of the challenge that awaits us.)

So, first half excellent. The second half wanders away a bit for me. The number of references nose-dives, as Wallace-Wells starts talking around climate change and how we perceive it in culture, and what to do about it, and it's all a bit woolly. Nicely written, of course, he can turn an excellent phrase, but with so much of the book focused on the near-apocalyptic worst case scenario, the best he can manage to conjure up for the rest is a sort of wavering if unexplained optimism that centres (in an endnote, of all places) around engagement, but doesn't give much indication of what this actually means, or how to go about it at scale. I mean yes, this book is itself an example of engagement, but such options are limited, and disinterest in the entirety of nonhuman life isn't going to help, I think. Wallace-Wells might be indifferent to videos of starving polar bears, for instance, but such are enormously useful tools in making people feel rather than think, and as a science communicator myself, I increasingly believe that the latter is useless without the former... and likely leads to those contemptible examples of elite and technological escapism that Wallace-Wells so illustrates.

This giant tome is enormously researched, and, though it does its level best to end on an optimistic note, the weight of evidence falling on the side of Big Business Fucking Everyone Over is, for me, just too much. That said, it is I think a book that everyone should read, because the sheer enormity of the problem facing the planet by our determined race to put profit above all is genuinely frightening. Klein, rather more hopeful than I am, thinks grassroots activism is a way to get those bastards on a choke chain of sustainable behaviour, and all credit to her: she's made some convincing arguments, using examples where such activism has achieved results. But the smug, determined ignorance of what scientists and other rational people are up against... well. Grassroots activism is all well and good, but it's about time we started hauling out the guillotines.

Weir really is an immensely readable writer, with a gift for making history into story. Often, I find, historians can wander forth into byways that are, shall we say, less interesting for the lay reader, but the ability to popularise history is as useful as the ability to popularise science, and Weir has done the first in spades. I enjoyed this enormously as a result, though it does strike me in some ways as unbalanced. Well over half the book is given over to the first two wives, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Naturally, given the effect of Henry's Great Matter on the fate of his country, there's a significant focus on this, but I think I would have preferred a more even page time between the six. I mean yes, I too tend to lump the four other wives together as "the rest," but earlier this year I read an excellent biography of Catherine Howard (by Gareth Russell) so it's not as if the material isn't there to give a fuller treatment to the others. They may have been queens for shorter or less influential times, but I'm still interested in reading about them.

Bit of a mixed bag here. The writing's thoughtful and it's a book about ideas rather than action, although there is some of the latter, no question. But the first half is also very slow and just a wee bit dull. I was planning on two stars until the halfway point, where things began to improve quite a bit and even some of the rather heavy-handed allegories weren't impacting on my enjoyment. I was beginning to think this was a solid three star read, until we hit the ridiculous ending. Worf finally gets something to do and it's tonally jarring and just painful, all the more so because the story had been setting up a discussion about the prices of power, and what happens when one group decides to abuse it. Well, nothing, that's what happens. Tasha Yar has an interesting point when she predicts what's going to happen to the exploitative bunch aboard the satellite, and honestly... there's an argument to be made that both justice and the Prime Directive say to let that prediction play out. Instead the PD is used to justify the opposite, and - I can't say I wouldn't mind so much, because the end really is dreadful - but I'd mind it a tiny little bit less if there'd been some considered discussion about the fact that when it comes to oppressing your fellow citizens, on your own head be the consequences when they finally rise up.

Finally, I don't have the faintest idea why Worf and Troi are on the cover of this book. They both have very minor roles - the main characters here are clearly Geordi and Data, and by a significant margin. Cover decisions really make no sense at all sometimes.