octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Happily, I got an advance copy of this! And I enjoyed it - the characterisation was great. Dennis and Coffin Ada, especially, are compelling characters even though the former is so wet and the latter so foul. Perhaps they're compelling because instead of despite... all I know is that I was consistently entertained by them. More entertained by them than the other London setting, if I'm to be honest.

It also helped, I have to admit, that when the book was focused on Dennis instead of the horrifying other London, Moore seemed to stay further away from the flowery language. He's much more effective when he's pared back a bit; some passages here, especially early on, were a bit of a slog. And that's from someone who likes Dickens and Peake and so forth for the density of their prose. This just didn't feel as balanced - but, as I said, the characterisation makes up for a lot. It's really excellent. 

This standalone memoir is volume two in Angelou's autobiography. And honestly, I was shocked. That does sound pearl-clutching, doesn't it? Yet I had only a sketchy knowledge of Angelou's life before this, and her being a teenage madame/prostitute was not on my list of "parts from which one of America's greatest writers is built." As if a facility for words has no place in a brothel. It's not a pretty bias, but there it is - a reminder to be more mindful in the future.

It's odd, in a way, reading this in my forties. Angelou, who is no more than nineteen, I think, in this, comes off as horribly naive at times - not at all unreasonable for her stage of life, but I winced reading her getting taken in by that pimp, and I think most people would. You can see the awfulness coming, even when she can't. Yet it's hard to call a teenage madame "naive" - her experiences exploiting other women are wince-inducing in a different way. All in all, that beautiful prose is in service, here, of a very inconsistent personality. I don't say that as denigration. Teenagers and young adults should be inconsistent as they're trying to work themselves out. It's just here the inconsistency is dramatised by an excellent writer, and so naturally the effect is heightened. 

Well, damn it. For ninety percent of this book I was sure that - against all odds, because even I'm not optimistic enough to think that it would happen again - I'd twigged who the murderer was before Poirot did. I may not have known why, but I was certain as to who. Looking back, however, there's a very clear red herring that I fell for hook, line, and sinker. Suckered again.

Somewhere Agatha Christie is laughing her long-dead head off. 

I read and reviewed each of the three novels collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. They were all three star reads for me; I liked the focus on science. I can't say that I've ever had a yearning for a career in forensics myself - as a scientist, I have occasional daydreams about being a different sort of scientist (an archaeologist, maybe, or an astronomer) - but when it comes to dead bodies, I prefer to read about other people dealing with them. It's entertaining because I don't have to do it.

I read the book because I'm a fan of the tv series and I've been rewatching it lately. I can't say that I've ever considered Grissom's smile to be "angelic" before, however - Collins clearly thinks it is, though, because that descriptor gets used a lot. And now I'm paranoid about repeated descriptions in my own work... 

I was reminded, when reading, that CSI has a tendency to lean hard on the killer kid trope, and so I was amused to see it turn up here as well! 

Unlike the first book, this had two cases that didn't tie together in the end. I quite like the double case approach, and if the first book played around with the idea of mob killers, then this one is strippers and family problems - the latter occurring when one suburban mum gets a little too into religion and comes into conflict with her husband and daughter. And I think, when you live in a place like Las Vegas - not that I've ever been, so perhaps it's more accurate to say that when you live in a place that has the reputation of Las Vegas - you're largely living in a place of extremes. If there's anything tying the two plots in this book together, it's that. On the one hand, the stripper storyline, where strip clubs have become such a normalised part of life that they've almost gone mainstream, and on the other a potential response to that: a retreat into religion when living in a city where sex and gambling and other "sinful" activities are so advertised and in-your-face.

I think the most sympathetic I felt to anyone, though, was the detective who moved to Vegas and who was quietly bitching to herself about the endless sunshine. I think that might get to me too, after a while. 

The first of the tie-in CSI novels, and even if I've never cared much for mob stories, this one was leavened by science and so kept my interest. Although what with Grissom's specialty, I was a bit surprised that there wasn't anything on insects here, but maybe the author thought that was a little too obvious a focus to begin the tie-in series with. Given I'm a lot more interested in bugs than in bullets, however, maybe one of the later volumes will go that way.

I did like that there was a fairly even focus on all the characters, although Sara got a little less than the others, I think, which is a shame as she's my favourite by far. CSI is one of the few shows where I enjoy all the characters, though - none of them bore or irritate me (aka the Bran Stark effect) - so I'm happy with an even mix. 

John Wyndham is one of my very favourite science fiction authors, and I have several of his short story collections. I don't enjoy his short work as much as his novels, but he has a handful of really outstanding stories - only one of them, "The Wheel," is collected here. Even then, I think my liking for "The Wheel" is because it is a clear dry run for The Chrysalids, which is one of my top three sci-fi novels of all time. 

Included in this collection is one story of his I hadn't read before: "The Curse of the Burdens," which is less a speculative short than a straight mystery novella, very much in the mould of Agatha Christie. It was alright, but why it was shoehorned in with the speculative stories here I cannot imagine. 

 

I read and reviewed the six comics collected here separately, so this is basically for my own records. The collected rating is the average of the individual ratings. Issues #2 and #3 got four stars from me, while the rest got three.

There's a lot that I like here. I like the central family and the lying cat and the overall weirdness. On the other hand, it felt as if there was a bit of filler and repetition going on here. Still, I'm invested enough to want to keep reading... 

Whenever one of the parents holds Hazel up - to say goodbye to a planet, or to say hello to her grandparents - all I can think is "There's something very bulbous about that baby." She's like ninety percent head.

Intentional or not? I guess we'll find out. 

It's not that I don't appreciate random acts of violence in comics (although it's a bit of a hard sell, honestly) but five issues in and I'm getting the feeling that this is going to be chase-and-fight-and-chase again, punctuated by something confronting to do with sex to make the whole thing feel edgier, at least for a good long while. And I'm willing to be entertained by that, but I wonder how quickly it's going to come to seem repetitive.