octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This... is some very strange poetry. A wee collection of short animal poems, and I thought it would be nice and friendly, but the first poem is about a rooster and at the end of the poem the rooster has its head cut off. The duck poem ends with the duck being roasted and "Quack! Quack!". The ox ends up in a slaughterhouse, and the ant gets stepped on. You get the picture. I was almost afraid to read the giraffe poem, but all the giraffe does is wax philosophical about stars - that one actually was nice. As was the elephant poem, until I turned the page and read the follow-up.

I don't know if this is meant to be black humour or simply the morbid obsession with mortality of a man who has no sense of humour whatsoever, but it gets three stars for sheer entertainment value, if entertainment is comprised of a continual jaw-dropping expression of total fucking bemusement at this parade of absolute bizarrity. Mr. Eldridge, I think you must have been drunk. Well, good for you I suppose. Now go take that poor fox out of the trap before it dies there, and no, you do not want to watch.

With the exception of a few digressions into past characters - including a lovely, if sad, story about Amir trying and failing to rescue a hunting hawk - this manga is pretty much entirely the wedding of Laila and Leily and their respective husbands. It's far less exciting for the girls than they expect, as their role is pretty much sitting quietly (and covered, in stifling heat) while everyone else celebrates, but they're able to get their new husbands to sneak them food, and the machinations of the four of them trying to stave off the boredom and various difficulties of a traditional wedding is entertaining.

More interesting, however - and I say this every time! - is the cultural detail portrayed by both the stories and the really excellent drawing. I don't think I've commented on the art in this series before, but it's enormously detailed and enormously impressive. Anyway, the standout section here, I think - and I'm saying this as a vegetarian - is the chapter on butchering sheep for the wedding feast. It's really interesting, and despite the gory subject matter I really appreciate how the author focuses on details of domestic life that other books might just skip over as uninteresting. It's really not.

There are some stories that I will just always, always find appealing, and stories about treasure hunts are one of them. The kids, knocking a hole between two wardrobes so that they can play at passing messages through, find in the space between the wardrobes an old journal left behind by a ten year old girl who used to live in their house. She hid her coin collection and set up a series of cryptic little notes as a game between her and her dad, but the family moved house and the treasure was never found. Well, cue the Boxcar Children tracking their way through haberdashery and dollhouse and grandfather clocks, trying to puzzle out this little trail that was thought to have long gone cold. Not a great deal happens, but it's a fun little adventure and makes me want to go on a treasure hunt myself.

This is possibly the least romantic of a series that has really only been partly romance, despite its title. It's also, I think, the one I've enjoyed least. Don't get me wrong, it was still a likeable read, due in large part to the art which continues to be outstanding, but I'm just not that interested in battles. The previous focus on culture and everyday life is much more appealing to me. It starts out well, with the focus shifted back to Amir and Karluk, but the bulk of this book is fighting, after the village is again attacked, this time with guns and cannons and it's all rather violent. Amir's brother Azel is an excellent character though, and Granny on her goat is still awesome, but when I think of this book I mostly think (shame upon me, I know) that the main villain has a face very much like Jabba the Hutt. Similar personality, too. In both cases: good riddance.

I think this is my favourite of the series thus far, though I admit I'm still finding it a bit of a slog. Still, it's got such a following that I'm going to persevere with it, and maybe I'll come to understand what all the fuss is about. I still find the fighting between the two boys deeply annoying - though thankfully it's pretty much confined to the beginning here - and Tohru's still thick as a brick, but that doesn't worry me. Her total lack of self-confidence is getting harder and harder to cope with, though. She doesn't need cold medication, she needs anxiety drugs and therapy. It's painful to read, and not in a good way. I did like the little tiger-girl, though, and how her preferred method of communication is biting people. If I were surrounded by these idiots, I'd be biting too. Honestly, she and Momiji are the two characters I most feel for. They're both very young, and are clearly being hit the hardest by their animal/zodiac identities, what with one's mother and the other's school bullying.

I have far less sympathy for the older characters.

I recently read The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Weir and really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd give another of her biographies a go - that of Henry's daughter Elizabeth. It wasn't as good. It's clearly well-researched and I enjoyed reading it... just not as much. I can't help but think it's because the focus was too narrow. Obviously the focus of Wives was marriage, and Henry's constant limping from one marital disaster to the next, and I wonder if Weir was too concerned with reinventing the wheel here. The first 200 pages of this biography seem to be nothing but Elizabeth manipulating men into thinking she'll marry them and then getting out of it - and, you know, this was a significant part of her reign. The way that Weir has constructed this book, however, it's very nearly all of it. Yes, there are subplots regarding the Spanish Armada and Mary Queen of Scots, but for the most part this is "who will Elizabeth trick into courtship this year?" and with the best will in the world by page 200 I was sick of the prevarication and repetition. I realise that I should feel admiration for Elizabeth's handling of a tricky situation, and how she managed to keep hold of her own power, yay feminism and all that, but really, by the end, all I felt was sympathy for the flunkies who had to deal with her.

She reigned for near 45 years. That's a long time. Surely, from all those decades, Weir could have found a broader range of things to write about?

For the most part, I really liked this. I liked the focus on music, I liked that Uhura was given a love interest - and that it was essentially her story. I liked the aliens, who were genuinely interesting, and I thought the problem they were both causing and about to suffer from was compelling. I even liked the Klingons... well, some of them. Kor was done very well indeed. I always like when the Klingons are given more to do than bluster and be violent.

Honestly, I liked so much of this that it was very nearly a four star read. The only thing preventing that was the constant mild irritation at the way some of the women are consistently presented here. Well, "some of the women" - there are really only two of note. Uhura, and Kor's wife Kali. Uhura is mostly presented pretty well, though there's one odd and really tone deaf passage where she's weighing up life as a Starfleet officer, compared to the prospect of leaving Starfleet for her love interest. She thinks, then, of Kirk, and how he's given up the prospect of a family to be a starship captain, and how despite his dalliances the Enterprise is the only woman in his life, and then she wonders would it make her a lesbian, to be a captain and love her ship like that. Which, what the fucking fuck? Then there's Kali, and while I'm grateful not to have Kor as the stereotypical Klingon, there's such a thing as going too far. Kali dusts and weeps constantly and is described as having a "tiger cub expression" and yes, she's good with a disruptor but there's something deeply condescending about it all. Tiger cub expression my arse. There's not a roll-eyes symbol in the world big enough, and it's such a shame, because the rest of the book was so enjoyable.

A welcome return to form after the war and battle of the last volume. The story swings back to Mr. Smith, though again he's just an excuse to introduce another bride. Anis, who has a happy marriage and a small baby, is nonetheless deeply lonely. Although she's from a wealthy home and shouldn't have any problems, her culture keeps her in isolation and really her only friend is the Persian cat (the drawings of this cat, with a range of very grumpy and put-upon expressions, are delightful). Her maid suggests that she visits the women's baths, which are a place for women to form friendships with each other, and pretty much the entirety of the book takes place in these baths, as Anis develops friends and interests of her own. There's one particular friend, Sherine, who Anis becomes very close with, undergoing a ceremony to make them "avowed sisters." In one way it reminds me of the "bosom friendship" of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, though damned if I don't end up thinking Anis is just as interested in Sherine as she is her own husband. The avowed sisters ceremony even comes across as wedding-like, though I in no way understand enough about the culture to have any idea about the truth of that. I just see Anis' fascination with Sherine's tits and draw my own conclusions.

I was about two thirds of the way into this volume when I suddenly thought to myself "I might actually end up giving this three stars!" I was feeling for Kyo for the first time ever. In my defence, his main character trait is sulky, violent brat so I do not feel I should be blamed for not caring about him or his drama. Finally, however, we get some backstory, which goes some way to explaining why he's as unpleasant as he is. Don't get me wrong, he's still unpleasant, but at least now it seems as if he realises it and is trying to change, which does get points for personal growth if nothing else. Unfortunately, the focus in the last quarter of the book shifts away from the strong relationship between Kyo and his surrogate father, towards Yuki and his older brother. Naturally these two are estranged, because every member of this stupid melodramatic family has issues up to their eyeballs, but they too are making an effort to improve. I don't care about their improvement, however, as I don't care about either of them. So something of a downbeat end there.

Oh well, it's still the best one so far.

This collects the first seven issues of the Coffin Hill series, and it was an enjoyable enough horror read, if nothing particularly special. For a storyline that was so much centred about terrible things that happen in the woods, I think I would have liked to see more of that setting shown in the artwork. The back cover very much plays on the idea of blood and tree roots, and it's an interesting idea (and striking image) that I think the artist could have done more with. Instead there's a lot of scenes set inside various buildings and I'm sorry... I kind of feel like the title promised me lots and lots of creepy trees and I never quite got them. But it's still decently atmospheric, with a complex structure (something I always like), and if the main character is a little bland, her mother, at least, is suitably disturbing.