octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I love this. It's fascinating. Selected poems of a fictional poet, edited by fictional editors, and it's published fifty odd years from now, looking back into the 1990s and forward into the climate disaster that's ongoing and to come. I understand that the author was a grad student at time of writing; I hope it gave him great pleasure to create the small academic essays that accompany the poems here, especially as the conflicts and critical judgements in them are quite made-up. Goodness knows the temptation to create your own bullshit when surrounded by the library stacks. I've been there.

Despite the fact that this is a genuinely serious book about a very serious subject, there's also a strain of whimsy and almost tongue-in-cheek biography going on here too. A small sense of the ridiculous that leavens all that anxiety, even when it shades into a very realistic sort of horror. That's my favourite part of this, I think. I read Leaving Miami and liked it a lot, but this is even better. I'm so glad I bought it.

Extended review to come in Strange Horizons. 

I think what I liked best about this was how often it avoided melodrama. There were several different points where I thought "oh no, here it comes" - not because I dislike melodrama, although I often do - but because the general restraint shown as the story went on was so finely balanced that I kept expecting it would topple, and then being consistently surprised (and pleased) when it didn't.

In many ways this is an older, grimmer, more monochrome version of The Lovely Bones, and while I confess to liking that book better, the sort of muted emotionalism of this one is also affecting. The murder is solved, but life for the people around Alice, the people who never really knew her, becomes a little lighter in the aftermath of her death. The blurb on the back of the book calls this "strangely joyous," which I think is overstatement. It's not joyous at all, but there is a sort of head-down-get-on-with-it minimalist optimism that adds sympathy and realness to the characters. 

I admit that I did not at all see the end coming here! Which is not terribly unusual with me and Agatha Christie, but there it is. For all I frequently (and accurately) accuse Poirot of being smug, I was so busy being smug myself at suspecting the whole fake disability/forgery/mailbox/will subplot that I completely missed the actual murderer. 

I comfort myself that I'm at least smarter than Hastings. Then again, that rather feels like competing against a Labrador in the brains stakes. Hardly something to be proud of, but I'll take what I can get. 

I'm not sure I've shelved a book under both the "plants" and "politics" tags before, but there should be more of them. This is a great beginner's guide to guerilla gardening: the act of planting in neglected public spaces, such as empty lots and the little spaces at the bottom of sidewalk trees. It's particularly good in that it's so thorough, focusing not on the best ways to determine suitable planting, but the importance of local action, of gardening as acts of resistance, of getting people onside and how to deal with any resultant complaints. The repeated themes of localisation, resilience, sustainability, and social inclusion are welcome, and all the facts about the benefits of nature on social activity are well-referenced.

There's also a number of short case studies. I would have liked to see a few more of these, to be honest, but there's still a decent range of illustrations that indicate just how many options the guerilla gardener has to increase the green spaces around them. 

I remember watching the episode this novelisation was based on! It was years and years ago, and while it wasn't outstanding it was likeable enough. As the episode, so the book. It's a quick, easy read, with some nice characterisation of B'Elanna. I quite enjoy the fact that her life has a history of turning to shit on the Day of Honour; it's the kind of black-humoured disaster roll that's the Klingon version of Murphy's law, I guess - mostly entertaining because it's not you suffering it. Though I have to say, any ritual that involves pain sticks is not one I'd be bothering with either, so I absolutely do not blame B'Elanna for giving that one a miss. 

I admit, I do think the conclusion is wrapped up too quickly and conveniently, but that was the case in the episode as well, so what can you do, really. Still, the book's passed a couple of hours on a rainy night quite nicely. 

I love the concept behind this: that a young woman, obsessed with books, falls compulsively in love with authors as a revolution takes place in the background. It's not even that she's in love with the authors at all, really - she's in love with books, and because she can't have sex with the written word, men who create the written word are good enough. There's a whole series of them, these transitory affairs, and Primi wanders through them and then wanders into therapy, wondering what on earth she's doing but not that invested in stopping it. Part of it's because she's looking for connection, the orphaned daughter of a cartoonist and a taxidermist who were so in love with themselves and each other that they may have thrown themselves into the sea, leaving their daughters behind.

There's an underlying weirdness here that I find very appealing, but it's never leaned on as much as I'd like, and I'm not sure that keeping the revolution so very much in the background does this book as many favours as it might. On the one hand, it's darkly amusing that Primi manages to miss nearly every political milestone as Marcos is toppled, holed up as she is with the latest writer to cross her path, but it's kind of baffling as well, how very much obsession can contribute to obliviousness. I want that political backdrop integrated more into the novel, or I want Primi's self-centredness to be so over-the-top monstrous that the whole thing reads as black comedy, or at least much blacker than it is, I think - that appealing weirdness can feel, in places, a little muffled. Revolution encourages writers, as the book points out, so it's a sexual opportunity for Primi really, and that should be hilarious. And it almost, almost is. 

Well this is depressing. It's well-written, and I zipped through it with pleasure, but there's no denying that it's just very, very sad. A drunk driver kills five people and when, a very few years later, he's let out of prison he end up dead. No surprise that it's one of the relatives of the victims who's done him in - the question the book's centred around is which one. I almost hoped it wouldn't be solved, because the ripple effects of that tragedy have clearly been profound and no one's really recovered. And let's face it, the murder victim was not the most sympathetic of men.

There are times when, reading mystery or crime novels, you can't help but think that the victim deserved it, and the kindest thing would be to let the perpetrators go. Just pretend not to see. I don't know how or even if that would work in real life, on a wider social level, but in a story? It's a bit of a shame that Kinsey just doesn't give up and let a more elemental form of justice prevail. Unfortunately she doesn't, and ends up just as traumatised as everyone else. No winners here. 

I've finally got around to reading and logging this entire series, having been meaning to read the whole thing for some years now. Hannibal is I think my favourite of the four books; it's certainly the one I've read most often over the years. Red Dragon, which I'd never read before a couple of weeks ago, I think, is a close second. They both got four stars from me, while the other two books only got three. I still liked them, just not as much.

There are some great characters here. Hannibal, of course, and Clarice Starling. But there's also the minor characters, and Harris has a great facility, in particular, for nasty little bottom feeders such as Paul Krendler and Freddy Lounds, who are antagonistic opportunists who are small and mean rather than the great horrific evil of the cannibal... and who get satisfyingly terrible ends anyway. 

Anyway: that's one more series I've finally ticked off the tbr list. And a good creepy pleasure it was too! 

I've read and reviewed the three books collected here separately, so this is just for my own records. The collected rating's an average, rounded up: both Red Dragon and Hannibal got four stars from me, while Lambs only got three. It's funny that the best-known got the worst rating, although "worst" is relative when I still liked it, and liked it well enough to read the series to begin with.

I do find it hard to read the series, though, and not see it through the lens of the tv show. It's one of my all-time favourites, and - it's so rare to say this! - the books don't quite match up. Usually it's the other way around. I don't say this to be uncomplimentary to the novels, here, because I've read them all (and in some cases more than once), but I love the show. And I'll always appreciate the books for being the genesis of that, I guess. 

I used to own a copy of this, but goodness only knows where it's gone... usually my missing books can be found at my sister's (and in all fairness, I am very late in returning some of hers!) but I don't even remember lending it out. So I had to resort to a library copy for this reread. It is, I think, my favourite of the series - there's something so horrifyingly disgusting about what happens to horrible Krendler, but it's just so well-deserved that I struggle to find even a shred of sympathy for him. And the pigs, too, are terrible. Worst of all is Mason Verger, and rarely has a villain earned an eel shoved down his throat (if only because it can't be good for the eel), but this one does. 

In some ways this book takes a little of the horror away from Lecter, though. He's still terrifyingly effective, but that murderous whimsy is here almost entirely directed towards genuinely terrible people. Not just rude people, but child abusers and sexual harassers and kidnappers and crooked cops. He's turned from monster to antihero, almost, and while it's deeply entertaining to see him aimed at awful people, it does undermine that sense of universal threat somewhat.