octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I read this for the 2020 Book Riot Read Harder challenge #16, though to be honest it was on my list of things to read anyway, so that was a happy opportunity to bump it up the list. It's got an appealing structure, bouncing back and forth between three different generations of historians, as they investigate the life and death (and undeath) of Dracula. I enjoy that sort of non-linear story-telling, anyway.

There's also a heavy emphasis on libraries and archives, which is reflected in the learned nature of the text. It's a very academic take on the Dracula legend, though it took a ridiculously long time for two of the central protagonists to figure out that Sveti Georgi referred to the legend of Saint George. I'm not that familiar with religion or with the mythology of the region, but even I picked that up within moments of it being mentioned, so I can't think why these supposed experts didn't get a clue. As much as I admire the structure and the scholarly nature of this, though, and as much as I appreciated how disturbing the story is - it's genuinely chilling in places - it can in places be a little dry. But really, if that's the only complaint it's still an excellent addition to vampire canon.

This is the most enjoyable of Verne's novels I've read so far! (Granted, I've only read a handful but this surpasses The Survivors of the Chancellor for sheer trash entertainment value.) It's also, for about 95% of it, a genre that I would never have expected of Verne. I'm used to him writing science fiction or even general fiction with various levels of pedantry - sorry, but you know it's true. Give the man a screw or a valve to write about and he could bore for France. But this is sheer gothic romance all the way through... except it isn't romance, because there's a scientific twist near the end which sucks the romance right out of it, and I say that with love, because the twist was pretty damn great.

I do enjoy books that cause me to stop and think about the shelves I'll end up putting them on, if only because my biologist self has an unreasonable love for classification. And when I read gothic romance I shelve it under "horror" and "romance" because to me that's gothic romance cut down to its constituent parts and it is redundancy to have a "gothic romance" shelf on top of that. But, as I said... the romance here is subject to twistiness, and it's not a real romance at all. It's just this fake-out gothic horror and I am delighted. Hence the shelving, for a gothic romance that is not.

The last book of a series of four: it's my favourite of the bunch, and by a significant margin. While the four kids who are the protagonists of this series all have admirable skills in their various crafts, I trained as a botanist so naturally Briar, who is essentially being trained as the same, is the one doing the work I am most interested in. A plague has come to the local community - an apt book for our times, to be sure - and the herbalists and plant mages are all working with the various other healers in trying to find a cure for the disease before it kills any more of the local populace.

For all it's hung about with the trappings of magic, this is the most science-focused of the books. Briar, his mentor Rosethorn, and company spend a lot of time taking samples from patients and analysing those samples in what is basically a magical laboratory, trying permutation after permutation of test and potential cure. This is exactly the type of story that is designed to appeal to me, and so it's no surprise really that I liked it the best. For all the magical backdrop to medicine in this world, however, I appreciated that the big magical save done by the kids (there's one in every book, and it's honestly the least interesting thing about them in my opinion) really has nothing to do with the community effort to find a cure. It's just a whole lot of trained and competent people working together, for science!!! Of all the Circle of Magic books, this is the one I'd read again. Really enjoyed it.

I read and reviewed the two books collected here separately, so basically this is just for my own records. The rating (three and a half stars, rounded up as is my wont) derives from the three stars given to Daja's Book and the four stars given to Briar's Book. These are the final two books in a series of four, and they are the best of them, I think - a judgement which is largely down to their two protagonists, who are the most interesting of the children featured in this series. I continue to enjoy the focus on craftwork, and both the books here place more emphasis on that, I think, than the first two.

I have a particular love for Briar, dedicated to plants as he is, but even so his book was, I thought, the best constructed of the four. A lot of that has to do with the focus of the book, and how little the central problem had to do with the magical abilities of the kids themselves. The kids tend to be ridiculously overpowered (the ease with which they solve each book's problem is the most unconvincing thing about them) but the focus in the last changes more to the abilities of the community in which the kids live, and how that community, working together, can address a plague. I just find that the more appealing story...

A little way into this I was really regretting picking it up. It was about the Ferengi. Wesley had a large role. And one of the guest characters was one of those science fiction staples: the person from the past, thawed out of cryogenics and trying to find their way in the future. I am entirely indifferent to that trope, I am largely irritated by the Ferengi, and I fucking loathe Wesley Crusher. But I stuck with it and you know what? Thompson subverted pretty much all of my expectations, and this ended up a likeable read.

First off, the Ferengi, though awful, were used effectively (i.e. sparingly) and got theirs in the end. Secondly, Wesley was also used effectively for once in his plot-armoured life, by which I mean no barely trained super genius saving the day. He was pretty much in disgrace anyway, back on the Enterprise after the Nick Locarno incident at the Academy, and much of his storyline was quietly doing junior officer level stuff with another junior officer from an insect race, and their friendship was low-key and well developed and if this was how Wesley had always been used, I wouldn't hate him nearly so damn much. Finally, the cryogenic time-jumper was clearly going through trauma from having to adapt to a new century, and trying to move on from what he had lost, and while that isn't a new twist in the trope it was honestly a fairly well-executed one, and married well with the main plot, which involved the exploitation of an developing world by Federation enemies. Much more enjoyable than I thought it would be, and given Thompson made me like this despite the three expected handicaps described above, I'll be keeping an eye out for other Trek novels by them in future, as I wade my way through the enormous backlist of this franchise.

Good thing I have a library card.

I remember commenting, in the review I left of it, that the first book in the series was fucking depressing, but Noughts & Crosses is a total ray of sunshine compared to this. It is absolutely, unrelentingly bleak, and I think that's why I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first book. That's saying something, considering how that book ended!

Blackman is an excellent writer, and this series is so well constructed, and so thoughtful, but "depressing" and "unrelenting" are perfect descriptors for it, and while I will certainly finish off the series, the horror of the first book has here become traumatic drudgery - not for me the reader, but certainly for the characters. And I realise that wanting to turn away from the sheer prejudicial misery of a piece of literature is completely indulgent given the subject matter, and those readers who cannot turn away because they experience a lot of what Blackman is describing in their own lives, but still. As tragic as the love story of Noughts & Crosses was, there actually was a love story in there somewhere, and that allowed at least some light in. That doesn't happen here... and it's a choice that culminates, again, in a shocking ending. But this time around that shock doesn't affect me at all, because while in Noughts & Crosses that utterly painful ending felt so inevitable within the narrative, here it just feels blatantly manipulative.

This novelette reads very much like it's the origin story for a longer work. It's pacy and zips along, and the use of language is great. I find myself less interested in the supernatural stuff than the everyday characters, though - Kia is certainly more interesting to me than Carlos, and I much prefer the parts of the story where the focus is on her. Although, given the ending, it appears that Kia is going to be confronted with the supernatural a lot more often in the future...

This was a really likeable read, and right up my science communicator alley. I came across it while doing the 2021 Book Riot Read Harder challenge - it was one of their suggestions for task 21, a children's book that centres a disabled character but not their disability. It's about 12 year old Libby, who has Turner's Syndrome, and who is determined to get the astronomer Cecilia Payne her rightful place in science history textbooks, because the ones Libby has at school don't mention her at all. (Libby's right, they should. Payne discovered the chemical composition of stars, but of course the credit was frequently later given to the man who tried to convince her she was wrong and then later published similar results. Boo. Boo!)

The whole thing is charming and good-natured and hopeful, and Libby's a fantastic character. She's backed up by a fantastic family, a fantastic best friend, and a fantastic teacher, which is good to read as well, a supremely supportive environment all round. I just really enjoyed it, and it was the perfect book for this challenge for me.

The idea behind this is so powerful - that the young black boys who are murdered as a result of racism are stuck as ghosts, just lingering on together through the generations. There's a particular moment (and I'm trying not to spoil it) where the imagery of this becomes really plain, and it's the central image of the book, I think - certainly the part of it I'll remember above the rest. Twelve year old Jerome is one of the ghost boys. The book begins with him being shot by a cop while outside playing, and it follows him from then on, watching his family grieve and the investigation into the officer that shot him... and may I say, the part of me that didn't expect the eventual verdict is clearly the part that needs to read more books like this.

One of Rhodes' more interesting choices had Jerome making friends with the only living person who can see him: the twelve year old daughter of the police officer that killed him. Sarah is living the consequences of her father's actions, torn between her love for him and her slow discovery of the racism that caused him to shoot a black child in the back. It's horrible for her, and she's just a child and it's not her fault either, but I still winced every time Jerome apologised for snapping at her. As for Sarah's father, well... Rhodes manages, I'm not sure how, to extend some empathy to him as well which is more than I'd be inclined to do. If it were me writing this book he'd have ended up in jail, but then again that seems like the kind of wishful thinking that only people like me can afford to indulge in, frankly.

This is the first Star Trek novel that I've ever given five stars to. It thoroughly deserved it, and the lion's share of the credit goes to the Romulan commander Ael, who betrays her own empire in the service of peace. In some ways she - and the entire book - reminded me very much of what may be the runner-up for best Star Trek novel I've read, which is John M. Ford's The Final Reflection, which does for its Klingon main character what Duane does here for Romulans. There's something about Federation officers coming up against enormously principled antagonists which clearly hits the spot for me, in that such stories prioritise empathy and character and ethics, and the price which must be paid for each.

The whole story here was just outstanding, and what made it better was the strong supporting cast. Nearly every TOS main character got a good role, and so did a number of characters from a number of other ships... and a number of other species. Often Trek appears stuffed with humans (and the odd alien with a funny nose) and that's an inescapable result of television budgets, I know, but few of the tie-in authors really seem to make an effort to shrug off those constraints. Duane clearly has, and it pays off in spades.

There are vanishingly few Trek novels that I would read again. They are largely only popcorn, and I say that with fondness, because I like reading popcorn. But this, and Final Reflection? I'm getting these books in hard copy, and they've earned themselves permanent spaces on my bookshelf.