octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Rachael King talks about how she was inspired by Susan Cooper and her The Dark Is Rising series. I can't say that I was surprised... Cooper's books were the seminal fantasy series of my childhood as well. I can't count how many times I've read them, and the feel of The Grimmelings is very similar, so naturally I enjoyed it. I do think that King's kelpie takes the book further into the horror genre than Cooper ever went, but just count me as happy that Magpie the pony didn't go the same way as Cafall.

Magpie is easily my favourite character here. The humans are great too, especially the two main kids Ella and Fiona, but Magpie has personality. And she's very, very clever. I was pleased that, by the end of the book, Ella's mum had come round to the fact that Magpie deserves anything she wants for the rest of her life, because she does. Taking on that kelpie could not have been easy, because that thing is horrible. I mean, a kelpie is a disturbing creature at the best of times, but this one is especially nasty. Somehow it's even worse in human form, ugh. If I'd read this as a kid it might even have given me nightmares... not a bad thing, for a horror! 

There's four books in this series. I read the first two of them back in mid-2022, I think it was, and then I must have got distracted, because I forgot about it entirely! I do dislike leaving a series unfinished, and I was quite enjoying it, so lucky for me the library still seems to have the last two volumes. Better hurry up and get to the last one quick before it disappears from the shelves. 

Coming back to the series after a two year gap, and it's easy to get back into. Not quite standalone, but I didn't need to recall every detail from the first two books for this to make sense either. It's very closely focused on Picard and a small team of disparate individuals trying to sabotage a Dominion facility, so in many ways the wider war is relatively absent. It's a quick, adventurous read, likeable and fast-paced. I also enjoyed the very small subplot about a brief love interest of Riker's, notable not for the romance but for representation, in one person, of the psychological effect the war is having on Starfleet personnel. It's got to be a horrendous job, patching up ships so that more people can be sent out to die, so the (admittedly skimpy) exploration of this was a nice touch. 

Every so often I come across a book on something I know nothing about, and I decide to pick it up and have a go. This is one of those books. It's a very broad treatment of obsession, seen through a historical and cultural lens. As Davis says in the conclusion, he's trying to compile a history of obsessions, because "you can’t understand a disease like OCD without a thoroughgoing knowledge of the social, cultural, historical, anthropological, and political view of that entity." Understanding that biocultural history, he argues, might be of use when it comes to treatment. He admits that he's not a doctor or medical researcher; much of the focus of this book is on other ways of approaching obsession. For example: obsession in literature, in visual art (paintings and sculptures, mostly), in sex, and so forth.

I don't know, to be honest, that this book leaves me with a very clear idea of what a condition like OCD actually is. In this I'm not much wiser than when I started. Then again, maybe that's the point. Both popular and medical opinions about obsession have changed substantially over time, and there's no real reason to believe that they're unlikely to change in the future, as the way that we understand obsession, and the cultural conversations about it, continue to develop.

I think the chapter on visual art was the most interesting for me. I've come away from it with the titles of two artist biographies that I'd like to get hold of, anyway, so that's something. On my to-be-read list they go! 

I have a confession to make: I got halfway through this book and almost gave up. Then I got strategic.

It's not that it's bad. It isn't. It's excellent. It's just heavy, and not in an "oh, this is so challenging!" sense, though it's that too. I mean it's a book of monstrous size and substantial weight. I like to take a book to bed every night and read for a bit before I go to sleep, but even propped up on multiple pillows this behemoth is hard on the wrists. "Please let there be an e-copy," I muttered to myself, going back to the library catalogue. I didn't find one. I did find this: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/785e5ea7-9973-4686-a6ec-6aa8682e6eae. Then I went to the publisher's website to corroborate.

After the critical success of this, the illustrated history, Bridget Williams Books sensibly decided to produce a paperback version, sans pictures. As they say on the paperback version page of their website, "the full text of the big hardback is available in a reader-friendly edition." I got this edition from the library too. (Yes, I borrowed both at the same time. I was determined to finish, and I was worried that if I stuck to the hardback version, one of the pillows might dislodge and then the hardback would fall on me and break a rib. Slight exaggeration. Very slight.) I took the paperback to bed and read the text, then once I was done I'd go to my desk, usually the next day, and read through the photos, diagrams, and graphs of the illustrated version. It's a beautiful book, the illustrated version. It deserves all the accolades it got.

It just weighs a fucking ton. Hence, I read both. 

It has taken me a long time to get through this - it's very dense, but that's because it's positively stuffed with research and has ended up extremely detailed because of it. There were a few short stretches where I felt that the detail overwhelmed the narrative somewhat, but on the whole it's really quite incredible how so many disparate elements of a history, of a land, and of its peoples are drawn together to give a real sense of cause and effect. It has narrative sweep, is what I'm saying. History on an epic scale. 

It really should be read by every New Zealander. 

This is a meandering, labyrinthine piece of very humane cynicism. It chronicles the political career of Willie Stark, through the eyes of his journalist friend (or maybe friend) Jack Burden, and it's basically a long, slow journey through compromise and corruption during the Depression in the American South. So few of the characters are actually likeable, and yet nearly all of them have their appealing side, or their admirable traits. It's not really the sort of book I'd typically go for, but its reputation precedes it and I'd read one of Warren's earlier books (Night Rider, his first novel) and found it compelling but flawed, so I was prepared to give it a go.

If this book has flaws I can't spot them. Yes, it wanders from the point. Yes, it's often slow. But the characterisation! The characterisation is outstanding and elevates everything else. It excuses the pacing; it positively encourages the wandering. These are all fully realised people, no matter their gender or political affiliation or flaws, and I can't point to a single one of them and say "this feels false or overdone or under-observed" because none of them do. It's an excruciatingly well-observed study of human beings and human behaviour, and it might have taken me the best part of a week to slog through, but it was worth it. 

It's a masterclass in character, it really is. 

I got an early review copy of this from the publisher, lucky me! It's set in Guatemala City, amidst environmental protests and state corruption and a long political history of violence... and a jaguar who shapeshifts into a human. I think it's more accurate to call Felipe that instead of calling him a human who shapeshifts into a jaguar, although he's so consistently close to human behaviour that in many ways it makes little difference.

I think that's what I like best about this book. There's this central character whose abilities are something of a fantasy staple, and yet that's not really the most important thing about him. I don't want to call his jaguar nature an afterthought, exactly, because the plot often hangs on Felipe's supernatural abilities, but far more important are the relationships that Felipe builds with the people around him. These relationships are increasingly impacted by the growing, extremely dangerous popular resistance to corruption, exploitation, and violence imposed by state and corporate actors. The story, then, is very much entrenched in the magical realist tradition, which is something I've always really enjoyed. As someone who's interested in politics, and in how politics is explored in speculative fiction, I find that magical realism is typically much subtler, much more clear-eyed, and ultimately a more cruel and compassionate observer than the other speculative genres. 

The magic overlays the politics, and such is the case here. It's not only Felipe, whose jaguar nature makes him want to stay unobserved and uninvolved. It's the other main character, Cristina, whose own oracular abilities are complicated by artistic ambition and family responsibilities and her own shifting nature. They're both enormously sympathetic characters, and their journey together culminates in this incredible scene that I won't spoil because it's the very end of the book - but it gave me chills, it really did. 

The thing about Moll is that she says, flat-out, that most readers will find the story of her repentance a lot less interesting than all the stories of her sinning... and she's right. The vast majority of the book is a catalogue of her bad behaviour, and I was honestly surprised at how modern her presentation was. I've never read Defoe and know vanishingly little about him, except that this book of his came out in 1722, so I wasn't expecting such a feminist approach to the main character. Yes, Moll is essentially amoral, always out for herself, but it's clear that Defoe considers her a product of exploitation and poverty as well as her own character. I think he enjoys her immensely, and that atonement at the end... it does water her down somewhat.

The thing is, even before we got to the watering down, I was getting a little bored. Immensely appealing as Moll is, her story got pretty repetitive by the end. There's only so many times she can steal or cheat or screw her way through the surrounding population until it feels a bit same-old, and I was done long before she was.

I will say that this edition has a particularly poor attempt at a glossary tucked away at the back. A glossary related to classic literature in general, not just this novel, but it's badly edited and occasionally inaccurate. Check out the entry for "words, to have" which asserts that Black Beauty was written by Emily Brontë. I think the fuck not. 

I read and reviewed the six Day of Honour novels collected in this brick of a book separately, so this is basically for my own records. On the whole it's pretty average: adventurous and fast-paced, and more than one of the novels here rushes their ending, which is a bit of a shame. Still, four of the six got three stars from me. As for the others: Ancient Blood was by far the worst of the lot. It got a grudging two stars from me, largely due to the absolutely idiotic plot with Picard and Alexander. Diane Carey is usually one of the Trek authors I enjoy most, but she missed the mark by a long way with this one.

At the other end of the scale is the four star Armageddon Sky by L.A. Graf, which is pretty damn good and the only one of the six that I'd ever bother to read again. I want my own copy of it, in fact - and half the reason that I keep recording books and reviews on sites like this one is that it allows me to make a note of the books I want to buy print copies of in the future. This was published way back when, so it'll likely have to be a secondhand copy at this point, but I still want it. Graf did a great job, and Armageddon Sky is the pick of the honourable litter. 

Of the six novels in the Day of Honor series, I read this one last. Which may be completely backwards, as it's the first chronologically, being the story of when humans and Klingons worked together to defend the same planet, even though they're enemies. It was a Klingon farming planet, which was quite nice - I always enjoy stories where the Klingon characters do something other than war. The Empire's got to eat, after all. No great surprise that the farmers turn out to be decent soldiers when that's called for, and I liked that they interpreted their vocation as a war against weeds and disease and hunger, essentially. (It makes me wonder if there are any tie-in novels out there that focus on Klingon doctors or singers or some such. I'm sure that I remember Worf being a fan of Klingon opera.)

For a story that's basically one long battle - never my favourite type of story - it was still entertaining. The fast pace and character work helped; I especially liked the main farmer Kerdoch. I did the the end was rather too abrupt, though, with the conflict too easily solved. Not the best book in the series, but not the worst either.