octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I reviewed this book for Strange Horizons (review coming soon!) so I'm leaving a few small comments here as well. I really enjoyed this, although it is admittedly right up my alley, with a group of nature-aligning individuals taking on secret identities in order to preserve the environment. It even has an intermittently-likeable and often ambiguous woman protagonist, which is another thing that I enjoy, especially as the narrative makes it clear that not many other people like her either. It's so much easier to enjoy difficult protagonists when the author isn't bashing you over the head with how wonderful other characters think they are! Just let them be difficult and stew in their difficulty and acknowledge that they are not always easy people to be around, it makes such a difference.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, as there are a couple of twists that I don't want to give away - the one that comes mid-book was genuinely shocking. I would like to give a shout-out to the world-building, though, which is extremely and quietly competent, especially given that Foxhunt is such a short book, not even 250 pages. I do love concision, and there's so much crammed in here! It's just a compact and fascinating read.

Stylish but superficial exploration of fear in horror films. The book is structured in a series of very short chapters, one per film, with a quick analysis of what makes each film so fear-inducing. It is, however, more subjective in its decision of which films are most frightening than I think the author is willing to admit. Frankly, I began to be sceptical in the introduction, where Glasby claims that he doesn't include Jaws or Alien as horror films because "scaring us is not their primary objective," apparently, to which I call bullshit. There are in fact no animal horror films here at all, and no eco-horror either. That's a subjective criticism in itself, given that these are the horror films I most enjoy personally, but I think when you're trying to put forward a list of "the scariest movies ever made" you either need to justify your biases or put forward a more objective rationale for including them (or preferably both). When you don't have even a single film representing some of the major sub-genres of horror, it's time, I think, to consider whether stacking your best-of list with serial killer films is a result of personal preference. (It's fairly obvious that serial killers, violent sadism, a dose of supernatural horror, and found footage is the horror Glasby likes best.) And personal preference is fine, as far as it goes, but relying on it limits the analysis of fear which is the goal of this book by excluding other types of fear produced by other types of horror films.

It's a pimped-up version of My Favourite Horror Films, basically, and it is very stylish, but it is also, as I said, a bit thin. Likeable enough, but I won't be referencing it in any of my own scholarship, for instance.

A collection of eight short stories, and if I recall correctly from the introduction, this was the first book of Star Trek fiction published that wasn't either written by James Blish or an episode novelisation. Notably, all the stories here were written by fans. And frankly, they're written at a higher level than a lot of the subsequent official tie-in fiction. Two of the stories at least are very good, and it's because of them that the collection's gotten four stars from me.

Those stories are "Ni Var" by Claire Gabriel and "Mind-Sifter" by Shirley S. Maiewski. Both of these stories deal very closely with the relationship between Kirk and Spock, and it's very easy to read the both of them through a slash lens. Of the eight stories collected here, it has to be admitted that Spock is the centre of most of them. And in one sense that's fair, as he was the break-out character of the series, but each of the stories is introduced by a member of the original cast, and it would have been nice, for instance, to have Nichelle Nichols introduce a story about Uhura, instead of another about Spock, and so on. That is a small quibble, however, especially given how well that focus worked out in the two stories mentioned above.

Notable, too, for any science fiction anthology (especially those produced in the 1970s), is that all of the authors included are women. As are the two editors, and it's a nice reminder that a lot of the heavy lifting done in Star Trek fandom back in the day was done by women, as that often gets forgotten.

It's taken me a few days to get through this, and it's pretty much unobjectionable. That's the first word I can think of to describe it. I mean, it's a Shannara book, you know what you're getting. Competent worldbuilding, a simple storyline, and quite a bit of waffle - these books always feel a couple of hundred pages longer than they need to be. That being said, I still enjoyed it. A decent enough popcorn read, and I appreciate the fact that although war is a central concern, there's none of this wallowing in grimdark that too much fantasy is rather too obsessed with these days. There's a very clear line, here, between good and evil, and all the good guys are undoubtedly good and trying their best and respectful of others. I do wish, though, that the tendency to have every main character related to someone else in the wider series would just stop. I find it both mildly irritating and extremely repetitive, so not unobjectionable at all I suppose, but still. Could be worse.

Yay, New Zealand horror! Especially New Zealand horror with magpies and the most stylish cover ever. I actually reviewed this book for Strange Horizons - will link the review here when it comes out - but I've been a bit behind updating my Goodreads reads, if that makes sense, so leaving a few short comments here now.

This isn't the first book from Cassie Hart that I've read, and it's not the first magpie-containing book by her that I've read either. And, you know, magpies are a bit of a maligned bird. I know some people have trouble with them but I never have. I find that generally if you're polite to them they'll be polite back, but the magpies of Butcherbird are rather more Hitchcock than harmless, as they swarm the protagonist Jena and generally scare the shit out of her, for reasons that she comes to understand as the book goes on. The trauma of being mobbed by magpies is, however, a minor one when compared with the many traumas that Jena experiences. Well. I say "experiences" and that's true, but the interesting part of her character - and sadly, the all too believable part - is how she fits the pieces of herself around that trauma, papering over the parts of herself that might cause trouble in the hopes of staving off further misery and disappointment. It doesn't work, of course, but the generational horror of what's happening at the family farm, warping each iteration of the family that lives there, is really well done and horribly convincing.

I'm partway through Blackman's Noughts & Crosses series, which is excellent if very grim, so when I saw this on the library shelves I thought I'd give another of her books a go. I liked it, but not as much. There's no denying that Blackman's a fantastic writer, though, and this story is particularly pacy, with an almost thriller-like presentation. It's non-stop action from beginning to end, which is admittedly not my preference when it comes to science fiction, but as I said, I still enjoyed it.

Noughts & Crosses is notable for its race-switching, and while Noble Conflict isn't as brutally in-your-face about its opinions, it seems fairly clear to me that it's a critique of colonialism. Particularly the type of colonialism that blames the victims, and frames their very reasonable response at being subject to the horrors of genocide as terrorism. I'd like to say that my opinions changed as to the status of the supposed heroes as the story unraveled, but truth be told I saw a lot of it coming. And let's be fair, the title of the book is practically dripping irony, so it's a signpost in itself before readers even open the covers.

Honestly, though, this is the third book of Blackman's I've read and they've all been well-written and interesting. I'd pick up any of the rest unreservedly, so time to take this one back to the library and see if they've got any more.

Credit where it's due: for a couple of hours, Jason Reynolds has actually made me give a damn about Spiderman, which is something no-one else has ever been able to accomplish. Words cannot relate how very little I care about Spiderman. "Why are you reading a book about him then?" you ask, and it's a sensible question. I have been slowly reading my way through a Goodreads list of speculative fiction written by black authors, in an attempt to actively widen my reading choices, and I admit: when I saw this on it I groaned. But the library had it, and so (with very little enthusiasm) I borrowed it from them. And you know what? I'm glad I did.

For one brief, shining moment, I actually cared about Spiderman. It will probably never happen again, not unless Reynolds writes another book about him anyway, but it happened once and that's miracle enough. I think what really appealed to me here was how very little this book was actually about Spiderman. Which sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. Most of the storyline here was about family and racism in schools and navigating poverty, and these are all subjects that I find much, much more engrossing than I do razor-tailed cats and weird-arse cults and spiderwebs shooting out from people's bodies. And there was a bit of that, but not a lot of it. I mean really not a lot of it. I know that superhero stories are often metaphors and that the better ones do have this focus on the human story as well as the superhero one, but the balance of the two, for me, is all too frequently skewed more towards the superhero side of things than I would prefer.

So I enjoyed this, and as a bonus, the library has another book by Reynolds in it (the non-fiction Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You, co-written with Ibram X. Kendi) so I'm going to get that out when I take this back today, because I like the way that Reynolds writes and I want to read more of it.

This was really interesting! All I knew about Cleopatra prior to this was from the Shakespeare play, and he's always dodgy when it comes to history so I took a lot of that with a grain of salt. In this book, however, Schiff uncovers a more accurate portrait of the most powerful woman of her day, although she is careful to let readers know when her sources are limited. History is written by the victors, and the most interesting part of this book, for me, was the critical assessment of the (primarily Roman) historians who wrote about Cleopatra during her life and after her death. They were pretty universally condemnatory, but Schiff concentrates on peeling back the layers of their prejudice - they were, after all, creating a narrative which almost required villainy on Cleo's part - to give a more nuanced perspective. It is a perspective that is unmistakeably marked by gender; Cleo would be roundly criticised by her contemporaries for flaws that were easily excused in her male contemporaries, particularly when those flaws were perceived to be sexual in nature. Schiff's biography is somewhat of a corrective, then, but isn't that what objective historians should be doing for the subjects of their work? Critically assessing contemporary sources for accuracy, no matter who they are? Schiff does a fine job of that, I think, and if occasionally the narrative dragged a little for my taste this is still an enjoyable and very intelligent biography of an exceptionally clever woman.

Likeable enough outing within the Star Wars universe, but it doesn't rise much above average, I think. Mostly because it spends too much time on plot instead of character. Leia and Han's three young children are kidnapped, but because Leia, Han, and Luke are all in separate places and without communication, the last two don't know that the kids are missing until a couple of chapters from the end, and they only really find out by coincidence - by being in the right place when one of the missing kids pops into view.

I have to admit that I find this sort of thing a bit irritating. Not just the whole coincidence thing, and I have never enjoyed plots that hinge on coincidence (Han and Luke just happening to vacation at a slave market that traffics in children!) but because it seems such a waste. Leia is of course going frantic and hot on the trail of the kids, but we never see how her relationship with her husband and brother is affected by this enormously traumatic experience, because instead of being in it with her, they're completely unaware! And so likewise, we don't get to see how Han reacts to his children in danger, because he's off at a gambling den and bailing Luke out of trouble, none of which we have ever seen before, and it's all just a great big contrivance to keep everyone in separate storylines until any opportunity for character work has passed. As I said, irritating. It's still likeable, as I said, but because of this fairly fundamental flaw it's ultimately not more than that.

A tongue-in-cheek short horror story about a couple who come across a murdered clown on Halloween. I don't want to give anything away so I'll try and keep this vague, but there are two twists that come very quickly one after the other, and I think the closeness of the second twist knocks the pacing a little off-balance. If the story were just a bit longer, the tension could be drawn out a little more. As it is, because the first twist hasn't had time to settle, I knew exactly what the second twist was the moment it turned up. A longer space between them might have distracted me enough not to see the immediate link. There. I think that's vague enough...

Also, clowns are horrible creatures. Why are they all so damn disturbing?