octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I'm reading through the numbered TNG novels this year as part of a reading challenge to myself. (God only knows why, but the beginning of a year sees me grabbing at lists of random reading material in the hope of I don't know what.) This is, I believe, #18 in the series, and it's been an interesting run so far. Some have been good, some have been not so good, and the previous novels have covered all sorts of things but there hasn't been a funny one before. This is funny, and I enjoyed it. It's not particularly deep or anything, but it's a quick, enjoyable read and I'm glad I've finally read it.

I have to admit, Lwaxana Troi is a character I've always found a little grating, but that is absolutely the point of her and so it works. Also, David's done a good job here of making it clear that her over-the-top personality is a way of dealing with her fears for her daughter's safety and future, which is perfectly reasonable. Deanna Troi doesn't always have an easy run of it, and if she's not kicked about within the Trek franchise nearly to the extent of, say, Miles O'Brien, she's still far more often in danger than any parent would prefer. Q, on the other hand, is pure obnoxiousness hiding nothing, and I took deep pleasure in his comeuppance.

The main character, a man with rather more money than personality, takes a steamer from England to America. He's a little bit dull to be honest, but periodically the endless description of life aboard ship is interrupted by an old friend, who is about to fight a duel onboard ship. I will not spoil things by telling how it ends, but I will say that when Dr. Pitferge was describing how his arm had been cured of paralysis back in the day, I saw the end coming like the ridiculous thing that it was, thought "Surely not" and then "Yes, surely, there's no hope of avoiding this train wreck" and there wasn't. Said train wreck was the only piece of excitement in the whole book, though, so beggars can't be choosers.

It's amazing how similar this is, in its way, to a lot of epic fantasies. There's no magic or dragons or anything like that, but the generational aspect of it is identical. Which in a way is a shame, as it's one of the things I find most frustrating about epic fantasies...

London is less a novel than it is a series of linked novellas, spanning moments in the city's history over two millennia. It follows the fortunes of a small group of families - the genealogical table in the front is invaluable in sorting them out - and that's where the fantasy similarity comes in. No matter how many generations there are between Ancestor X and Descendant Y, they share the same physical characteristics and, more often the not, the same personality. (Take a look at the Ohmsford and Leah character types in Terry Brooks' Shannara series if you want to see the fantasy version of this technique.) And honestly, competent though the storytelling is, it gets repetitive fast. If you're going to write about (essentially) the same characters for 1300 bloody pages, I want to see more character development than I got. Otherwise it's just a series of episodic adventures, and there's nothing wrong with that, exactly, but they're adventures in service of comprehensiveness rather than story. If ever there was a book that needed to kill off some of its darlings, this is it. There's only so many times I can read about a Silversleeves' giant nose before I'm sick to death of the whole beaky family.

I read and reviewed the two books collected here separately, so basically this is just for my own records. Both those books earned three stars from me - they're likeable fantasies with a focus on crafts and how those crafts intersect with magic, which is a fascinating idea. Skills like weaving and metalwork, for instance, are genuinely interesting, and I liked how the child protagonists were expected to learn them as a way of exploring their other talents. I do think that, in both cases, the stories were perhaps a little too crammed, as everything moved very quickly and with not a lot of depth, but they were still enjoyable reads.

This collection includes a bonus short story, "Elder Brother," which I would have rated four stars if it had a Goodreads record of its own. It's the story of a friendship between a woman and a tree who was turned, by accident and against its will, into a human. Like most of Pierce's work that I've read thus far, it prioritises kindness and friendship and I appreciate that.

I'm reviewing this book for Strange Horizons, and so the full review will be up there shortly, but in summary: I had such high hopes for this. And credit where it's due, the fiction collected here - four short stories from well-known SFF authors - is worth reading. It's not particularly outstanding, but it's worth reading. The non-fiction, however, is a mess. Interesting ideas but the presentation is turgid beyond belief, and deeply unfocused. I'm not even sure who this book is for - all I know is that, bar the stories, the thought of dipping into it again is not an appealing one.

You know, I'll say this for Mathewson: her books are easy reads. I've just finished reading one when I should have been reading books that were due back at the library two days ago, and I zipped through 400 pages so quickly where previously I didn't feel much like reading at all.

That said, I wish I liked her characters more. Particularly, I wish I liked the men more. Zoe, the heroine, is a nice person and I wanted good things for her. But, as with the other Bradfords in the other books I've read in this series, the love interest is a patronising arsehole. It doesn't make it better that he admits to being one - if you know you're being an arse why don't you stop being one? The only answer I can come up with is that he just doesn't care enough about other people to make the effort. That he (eventually) considers Zoe worth the effort doesn't impress me - you can't make up for being shitty to a waiter, for instance, by being nice to your date. I'm using that as an example only, I don't believe Trevor was actually shitty to a waiter here. But, as with his relatives, the way he talks about women he's previously dated is so off-putting. If all your exes are needy, awful bitches then perhaps the mirror might show a common denominator to indicate the problem lies elsewhere, is all I'm saying. (I reckon they were probably all perfectly nice women who got screwed over by this shit and didn't like it, frankly. Listening to him whine about how they tried to control him with food made me think they just stopped cooking for a man who couldn't be bothered to invest even the smallest amount of emotional labour in return.)

He's honestly awful. I mean, he has this secret friends with benefits relationship going with Zoe, because she's too plump for him to want to be seen with in public, basically. And he knows that she is literally starving herself into fainting fits and still he never shuts down his colleagues (and hers) when they make fun of her weight, because they might realise he's fucking her and embarrass him for it. Awful person, and I know I say this a lot when reviewing romances, but I don't care if awful people are happy.

As a bonus, this edition had a novella tucked away at the end about the honeymoon from hell. It was entertaining enough, not as funny as the last hell honeymoon in one of the other Mathewson books I read though.

I don't know that I really liked this as much as I appreciated it - the subject matter is extremely confronting - and I don't know that I'd call it young adult either, although the author does in the afterword and he would know. It's a war story set in the future, inspired by the Nigerian/Biafran war of the late 1960s. And honestly, although it is very well-written, I spent most of the book thinking that I would give it three stars. That is not an indication of its quality. Rather, it is a reflection of the fact that two of this novel's primary characteristics are things that generally don't appeal to me.

First, there's a lot of cyberpunk influenced things here. Implants, cybernetics, hacking, that sort of thing. With the best will the world this is not a genre that's ever really grabbed me, and it doesn't do so here. Then secondly, so much of this book is action-packed battles, especially battles fought by characters wearing mechanical suits, and again... not for me. Never has been. I'm just not that interested in battles. However, if you are - if you love action and cyber stuff and non-stop pitched fighting - then this is absolutely the book for you.

So why did I change my mind and up the rating? Well, about two thirds of the way through the war ended. And then the two main characters - young girls on opposite sides, who had forged a relationship close as sisters when they were even younger - had to navigate peace. They're child soldiers, essentially, and the long, horrific history of how child soldiers have been used has clearly been an enormous influence on the text. I know admittedly very little about the complexities and history of the situation, but if Onyebuchi hasn't researched the hell out of this I'd be amazed, because the emotional responses feel so real. For these two girls, peace is almost worse than war. War had clear sides and purpose and camaraderie, and peace is indifference and compromise and recovery, and these are terrible, painful things... especially as the peace is so fragile, and they have hurt others (and themselves) so much. As good as the first two thirds are, and I can recognise how good even if it doesn't appeal to me personally, that final third is so compelling. It took me a long time to wade through that first section, and a very short time to finish, because by the end I was riveted.

If this book sounds like your thing, go for it. If it doesn't seem like it would appeal to you, I'd suggest you give it a go anyway, and stick with it, because it becomes so rewarding, it really does.

I do enjoy these books! Well, I've only read two of them thus far, but the sentiment stands. I particularly enjoy the voice of the protagonist, Mary, who is shrewd and learned and with an extremely cutting sense of humour. The mystery here is a fairly slight thing, rather less impressive than the characterisation, but I still got an enormous amount of pleasure out of reading it. Regarding the ending, however... I am wholly unconvinced by the sudden swerve to romantic that the central relationship has taken. I mean really wholly unconvinced. Because it was so suddenly presented at the end, I'm withholding judgement until I read the next book, but the Holmes and Russell pairing worked so well for me as a mentorship/friendship, and I'm honestly disinclined to overlook the forty odd year age gap between them.

This is really interesting, if perhaps not as cohesive as it might be. It's essentially a collection of case studies, loosely linked by the idea of how urban setting adapt (or more frequently don't) to climate change. There are chapters on the Norfolk naval base, on floating neighbourhoods in Lagos, on flood prevention measures in Venice, on real estate in Miami... that sort of thing. More than anything, I think, the over-riding theme is on compromise continually undermined by determined blindness. Goodell talks to a number of officials, business people, and scientists who understand the reality of climate change, and are trying to push through counter-measures that will be accepted by the populations that they serve (and are part of), knowing that those measures will not be enough. Most of the solutions offered here are - and are frequently admitted to be - measures designed primarily to buy time, because dragging down progress are those populations who have a vested interest (financial or otherwise) in clinging to familiarity and ignorance.

Honestly, it's hard not to read about this latter group and not feel various shades of contempt. The ancient businessman who refuses to address climate change in his real estate plans because he's not going to live long enough to see the worst of it, so he doesn't give a damn about how future generations suffer so long as he gets his. The small handful of wealthy homeowners living in a flood zone, whose lawsuits have forced the local council to maintain the constantly washed-away infrastructure that services their homes, even at the cost of bankrupting the community. And even, sad to say, the ordinary people who keep rebuilding their homes in danger zones and keep needing to be bailed out because of it and who nonetheless keep voting for politicians who are actively denying climate change... Goodell tries hard to make me feel for them, and how much they love their homes, and I admit I felt a twinge for them, at times - not the rich, well-educated people, but the poor who don't know any better - but it was only a twinge, because let's face it: at this point they are choosing not to know better and, judgemental person that I am, I am judging hard.

More interesting are the solutions being offered, some of them really innovative, like the floating school designed by Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi. More of this, please, I am sick of reading about ostriches.

This is a short story presented as its own little book, and as a fan of short stories I do like seeing books like this, which give special focus to the form! It's almost but not quite a picture book - while there are a few illustrations, I wouldn't say there's enough of them to really be a picture book, but the design is nice nonetheless. I also liked the story - it's one of the Multivac tales, and while I've read some of those in various anthologies I don't remember reading this one before. It plays on the idea of artificial intelligence developing emotional intelligence, and what happens when that intelligence becomes depressed. It's a genuinely interesting idea, but it does rely on Idiot Plot somewhere in the middle, where Multivac's minions fail to consider just which family member they are targeting. They do eventually, but given the established practices within the narrative - I am being vague so as not to spoil things - surely this is the very first question which should be asked when a problem arises.