octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Two and a half stars, rounding up to three. This was generally a quick, enjoyable read. I liked the environmental focus of it, and I really liked the planet of people who were dedicated to conservation, essentially making their life's work the restoration of endangered species throughout the galaxy. I'd absolutely read more of them, once they got off their about to be uninhabitable world (volcanoes are no fun) and settled on a new colony. To be honest, I was more interested in that than the schism between the conservationists and their (first) old world, and I was certainly more interested in that than I was the grumpy return of yet another group from that same initial planet. That being said, I liked it all well enough, and it would have been an unreserved three stars from me, had the final chapters not been marred by not one but two plot points of astounding stupidity.

First is Picard's decision to ram the enemy ship with the Enterprise. Tactically it's a sound decision, I understand it, but he demurs a little because it will kill all the civilians on board, including the crew's family members and children. I understand that too. Still, he has plenty of time to send said civilians to life pods and doesn't do it, because it apparently doesn't even cross his mind. What on earth, Picard?! Were you dropped on your big bald head? Second was the inability of Dr. Crusher to tell that this important animal taking up room in her sickbay was pregnant. Its keeper had previously said it's always hard to tell, which is pretty much brandishing the narrative pregnancy gun, but the thing is, the beast gets sick. Crusher treats it successfully because body scans show blockages in its breathing tubes. Now it's just me, but if a scan can pick up a bronchial blockage, surely it can pick up a full term pregnancy, if only because there's suddenly another heartbeat! Situational incompetence from the captain and the chief medical officer does not a happy reader make.

I don't know what the editorial team was on when they let either of these things get past them, but clearly they were on lots of it. Honestly, how does stuff like this get missed?

A very different steampunk from the ones I usually read! Which isn't saying much, as I haven't read a lot of steampunk, but still. This is very much an alternate history of the American south, set in New Orleans. I love the writing, and the wide variety of characters - I think my favourites were the two nuns, squabbling over how to cook gumbo while hiding smuggled chemical weapons in the stove! "The two of you is nuns?" questions the airship captain, and I had about the same reaction. Anyway, I enjoyed so much of this, and I really appreciate how much world-building has been achieved here in such a small package. This is a novella, the story only goes for 110 pages, and how fantastic is it to get so much stuffed in such a small book, instead of having to wade through 800 bloody pages for less effect.

The only thing that didn't appeal so much was the ending, which smacked a whole lot of deus ex machina to me. I'd rather Creeper made sure of deadness first and prevented things from kicking off, rather than the ending we did get. Not that interested in gods intervening to fix things up, to be honest, but that's a personal preference rather than a genuine plot problem I think.

Two and a half stars, rounding up to three. I didn't like it quite as much as the first book - it certainly took me longer to get through this one. I've been meandering through it for weeks. It's just, I think, too long, and I held that opinion about its predecessor too. I keep thinking, while reading, "Would you just get on with it!" which strikes me, looking back, as a little unfair as it's pretty much non-stop action, but it all just blurs together into more-of-the-same, and my enthusiasm for it never really fires. I'll read the last book in the trilogy for the sake of completeness, but I can't say that I'm going into it expecting any sort of appealing concision.

I also find Sadie much more interesting than Carter. I expect I'm supposed to find him running off to rescue Zia as laudable in some way, and he's clearly rewarded for his poor decision given what's been left with her, but I can't help but think that, in the final days of saving the world, running off to rescue a potential girlfriend over, you know, saving the world, is grossly self-indulgent and not at all admirable. But then Sadie bunks off for a day to celebrate her birthday, so I suppose she's no better really. I know this is a children's series, and childishness is therefore to be expected, but sympathies are fading fast. Can't help but think Walt and Jaz seem more reliable...

Riker is sent to the planet Besidia to investigate the apparent theft of a valuable artifact by an old friend. He's helped in this by one of the locals, and together they track down the lost seal, the lost friend, and a trade conspiracy. It's a well put together mystery, and I enjoyed it. If it were not for the subplot, I'd have rated this three stars, but unfortunately that secondary story - Data playing baseball - is hands down the most boring subplot I've read in all of Star Trek. It interrupted the interesting story far too often, and it was interminable. I actually groaned out loud - several times - when I turned a page and there it was again, bogging up the book and slowing down the pace like a quicksand of ultimate dullness. Sometimes good writers can elicit interest from an uninspiring subject but I can tell you that is not the case here.

I can only think that the sort of pedantic detail that characterised this tedium comes from an author who really, really loves baseball. And, you know, I'm generally all for authors going on about their hobbies in their work, but from my own perspective this was a darling that needed to be taken out back and shot. Baseball is boring as shit. And I can't help but think that Friedman is aware of this on some level, given how clear it's made in the story that, in this timeline, baseball is pretty much a dead sport that no-one plays any more. And do you know why? Because it's boring as shit.

This was really quite interesting, and skipped along at pace. Too much pace I think, at the end, because the conclusion was crammed into the smallest page count possible - it all ended very abruptly - but it got the job done. It's funny, reading these books in order, the patterns that emerge. This, like the last, is another criminal investigation story. There's a micro-contamination science lab aboard the Enterprise (and it must be said that Vornholt makes good use of the science here), and the famed research team of husband and wife who run the lab are put under the microscope when one of them turns up dead... and the other is chief suspect. Worf and Troi team up to investigate, and it's a good pairing. They're nothing alike, so it's entertaining to watch them bounce ideas off each other.

Also entertaining, in a very specific way, is Wesley. Assigned by Worf to tail one of the scientists, for reasons passing understanding, he's thumped by an underling and almost murdered himself. I say yay for the former - who amongst us has not wanted to slam that annoying kid into a wall? - and boo that the latter did not succeed. I am waiting with baited breath for these tie-in novels to reach the point in the series where he buggered off, so that I can read TNG stories without him in them. Hopefully that will be soon.

I don't know that I'd call this an "uncommon" field guide, exactly, but it's certainly a very good one, if rather exhaustively detailed in some places. It's also an American field guide, and while there's a lot of crossover from introduced trees - you can find an oak or a chestnut in most places - it will of course be of more use in that country.

It's a good book for beginners, too, I think. Full of resources, and if each entry begins with the standard information that you'd find in any field guide, the bulk of every entry comes after that, in a short essay on history and context of the tree in question. These are genuinely accessible pieces of writing, geared to the interested non-scientist. I do wish there was a bit more variety in them, however. More information on mythology and ethnobotany, and less information on which random US President planted what when they were at the White House, for instance. I wonder if, in a book like this, that extra material might have been gathered from various nature writers, in more of an anthology/supplemented field guide type of book. This would have the benefit of a bit of diversity in the writing, which might have made it feel a little less repetitive. Because valuable as this is, it took me months to wade through...

I read and reviewed each of the three books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating is an average of the individual ratings, rounded up because Goodreads doesn't do fractions. Both Prince Caspian and The Silver Chair earned two stars from me, which isn't great. The first irks me because it's where the rot begins with the Susan Problem, as I call it, and the second is the Narnia book I can never remember, despite the fact that I've read it several times. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it exactly but I've always found it forgettable. Redeeming the collection, though, is Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is a four star read for me, full of really beautiful imagery. I appreciate that, and it's hauled the collected rating up by main strength.

It's an odd collection though, this one. Why collect these three books specifically, out of the seven? I'm not getting the reasoning behind it, to be honest (I have a vague recollection that publication order is different than in-universe chronology, so maybe that's it). Whatever the reason, it's a collection that contains neither of my two Narnia favourites, but then again it doesn't have the execrable Last Battle either, so I suppose it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The second book in the Circle of Magic series, and I liked it as well as I did the first. I continue to enjoy the emphasis on crafts, and I continue to think that there's a lot stuffed in here and that the story is perhaps too rushed to do it all justice. (Perhaps if some of the endless references to Tris' uncontrollable hair were removed, there might be more space to work.) And, you know, I also like the idea of these four kids working together, and how when working together they are more of the sum of their parts. It's an argument for cooperation and mutual support, and I always enjoy those. The way they're accumulating power, though... I fully expect them to be able to mimic the effects of a nuclear bomb by the next book, and to swat down planetary threats by the series end. I recognise that over-powered pre-teens are wish fulfillment fantasies for the primary audience of this series, and that I'm several decades too old to be that audience, but they're all so easily and massively gifted that there's no real sense of threat.

I did like the bird, though. Shriek is a good name for him, too.

I am trying to read Jules Verne, I really am, but with a few exceptions his work is filled with extremely unpleasant men. I don't know why he's so determined to fill his lesser novels with racist stereotypes - Robur has a particularly virulent and nasty example of such - and the slaughter of endangered animals - in this case, the use of explosive harpoon on a whale, for fun, as the killers were all on a balloon and didn't even have the excuse of using what they slaughtered - but I am sick of reading it. Does he really have to include this shit in every book that he writes?

Don't expect any sort of plot here, either. Robur kidnaps three men, refuses to speak to them, essentially tortures one of them (the black man, of course, and it's played for laughs; I told you it was nasty) and the book chronicles all the cities and landscapes they pass over, in lieu of conversation or, you know, actual character development. I include motive in that lack of development, because there isn't one. There is no actual reason for Robur to behave in the way that he does; his actions are contradictory in almost every respect. Worse, the book ends on a sort of triumphalist note, saying that Robur, this most excellent scientist, will return when the world is ready for his genius. Except his genius is wrapped up in the flesh of a total bastard who thinks nothing of kidnapping people who disagree with him, and trapping them on an island for the rest of their lives. If Verne is arguing that scientists should be totally devoid of ethics, he has done a bang-up job.

Why are all his characters so damn unlikeable? If everyone in this novel had fallen into the sea and drowned, the world would be better off. It certainly would have been a more satisfying ending.

There's no getting round it. This is a Wesley Crusher story and I can't fucking stand Wesley Crusher. My sister and I used to watch The Next Generation when we were kids, and we'd heard there were badges out there that said "Nuke Wesley" and we wanted some. Badly. (How is it that the show-runners did so badly with him, where only several years later Jake Sisko was such a well-written, well-rounded kid? Whatever caused the learning curve for character among the show's staff, good.)

In this book, Wesley is convinced he needs holodeck training to better his chances of being captain one day, so he programmes a made-up species of opponent, because none of the Federation races are challenging enough for his special self, big-headed brat that he is. The result is the Boogeymen of the title, childhood fears of his that manifest in irritating ways. (At one point the Boogeymen turn into ninja and kidnap him. It's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.) And the holodeck malfunctions, as it always fucking does - and I dislike malfunctioning holodeck stories, if only half as much as I dislike Wesley Crusher, so this book is the perfect storm of suck for me - and of course "Captain" Crusher has to step up, and if only he'd fallen down a turbolift shaft instead.

I do appreciate that Troi steals Wesley's thunder in the end by coming up with a solution so simple that the paperclip mascot from Microsoft Word could have thought of it, but it is nowhere near enough for me to tolerate the rest of the book. And look, if I were indifferent to Wesley this still wouldn't be a story that appealed to me - it would likely only rate two stars - but as I said: I can't stand him. I really can't.