octavia_cade's reviews
2611 reviews

This is a great idea for a Star Trek book - alternate timelines, playing off canon. I think probably nearly every Trek fan has watched one episode or another and thought "What would it have been like if...?" Hell, half of fanfiction explores that concept. 

Crucially, it explores alternate timelines in a way that is far more interesting to me than the bloody Mirror Universe, which I have been entirely sick of for decades now. It's probably no coincidence that, of the three novellas collected here, the one most resembling the Mirror Universe ("Seeds of Dissent" by James Swallow, in which Khan wins and the quadrant is ruled by genetically augmented characters like Bashir - essentially Space Nazis) is the one I like least. It also has a far too easy conversion at the end, I feel, but that's neither here nor there.

The best of the three, I think, was "A Less Perfect Union" by William Leisner, where Earth is not a member of the Federation and Kirk really struggles to get over a hatred of Vulcans after they are responsible for the death of his wife and child. There's something very hard and very hopeful and relatable about what the characters go through in this one. 

Apparently there's a second, similar volume out there - my local library supposedly has it, but they seem to have lost it so here's hoping it turns up soon in the bowels of stack. 

I have to admit that I picked this up at the library without even reading the back - I was looking for a romance book without an illustrated cover to tick off a reading challenge task, and I've read and enjoyed one of Clayton's romances before, so figured why not?

You can imagine my delight when I got home and realised it was a foodie romance. A chef has a meet-cute with a farmer and while half of the book is them slavering over each other the other half is them slavering over cake and other assorted foodstuffs. Given that I'm the type of person who will happily read cookbooks, this was immediately appealing. It was lighthearted and entertaining with nice people as the protagonists which is really all I ask for in a romance. Amusingly, it seems like just the kind of romance book that would do well with an illustrated cover.

And now I want some walnut cake. 

I'm trying to work my way through the Star Trek novels, but I continue to have real problems with this series. I can't help but think that if I were living in the Federation and was in some sort of trouble, this is the very last crew I'd want to rely upon to rescue me. They all feel so damn immature, and I can't think of a single personal problem that any of them have (or might have, in the future) that I would care about in the slightest. Which is a problem, given how much of the series is given over to their personal issues. 

I would never have thought that I'd give such a high score to what is effectively a story of prolonged animal abuse, but here we are. Also, I don't know why I saw the sharks coming a mile off when the old man didn't - especially considering that fishing isn't high on my list of interests or marketable skills when it is both to him. Still, I'm prepared to take such selective stupidity as metaphor in this case, and as such it was was genuinely effective. Mostly, I think, because of the characterisation. I don't find the old man pleasant, really - mostly I just felt sorry for him, with a side of why-are-you-doing-this-to-yourself, but then I think that about a lot of Man vs. Nature stories - but there's no denying that he was finely drawn.

It's changed my opinion of Hemingway a bit as well, to be honest. This book has been on my to-read list for a while, but I've been putting it off because the first Hemingway book I read was The Sun Also Rises, back in 2017, and I didn't like it at all. I had another stab a year later with A Farewell to Arms, which I liked better, but even then I couldn't see why Hemingway had the reputation that he does. Now I see it. This was really good. Not always to my taste, but the skill is clearly apparent to me in ways that it wasn't before.

I'm tempted now to just never read any more of him ever again. Might as well go out on a high note. (I really did think Sun was awful.) 

This is the kind of sports book I enjoy! By which I mean it is more about animals and human relationships with them than it is about, oh, I don't know, the things I would traditionally think of as sporty. 

Knowing very little about Mongolia, part of the interest of this book, for me, was the very accessible look at what it's like to grow up there. Nurgaiv is twelve years old and her family is nomadic, and so I enjoyed reading about what her life is like and how she and her family live. Admittedly, I'm even more interested in the eagles. There are no golden eagles in New Zealand, and while I saw a bald eagle once when I visited Seattle I've only ever seen golden eagles in pictures or videos. I didn't even know that they lived in Mongolia! Clearly they do, and there's a long tradition of training them as a hunting partner. I would have liked a little more focus on how this is done, and the history of the sport in general - certainly more on the history of women in the sport, as they go back to 700 BCE, according to the book - but then I'm aware that this book is directed mostly at children, so I can understand the strong focus on Nurgaiv instead. 

What a fascinating relationship she has with her eagle! I'm adding the film to my to-watch list - it will have to do until I can see a golden eagle in person one day. 

This didn't do it so much for me I'm afraid. I liked the idea and the setting - a Halloween party at Heidelberg Castle brings together a ghost and a romance writer - but there was too much going in here. It felt as if it needed to be stripped back a lot, and have more attention given to the central pair. I've never found love at first sight particularly convincing, so as a reader I need more of a build-up. Furthermore, the 400 year old ghost was just too modern for me - had he been the ghost of a stone mason killed in contemporary times he would have behaved no differently. 

Still, I bought the collected trilogy, I think it is, so the other novels in the series might be more to my taste. 

This was a very interesting book, with lots of illustrations - which I enjoy - and it's clear that Lederer is an expert in his subject. It didn't take long to realise, though, that he has a very specific explanatory style: a general description of some feature or other, and then a series of often very brief examples. I can't know, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if this book began with a list and was then converted from bullet-point to paragraph form.

Don't get me wrong. I like texts with lots of examples. Everyone has different learning preferences, but I've always been able to grasp examples a lot more easily than theory (probably why I can never get on with philosophy). There were some fascinating examples here, and I found myself looking up birds as I read, trying to learn more. I can't get away from the feeling that I was reading a list, however. 

The storyline here is blindingly obvious and I think any child reader would say the same, but it's still an enjoyable read. A furry, rhino-type creature is smuggled onto the station and Jake and Nog rescue it and have fun with their new pet, who is not all he seems. My opinion of these Trek children's novels (because they're not young adult by any stretch of the imagination) is always closely linked to how credible the story is, given the age of the two protagonists, and this one's bang-on. It's a sci-fi twist on boys-and-their-dog, and it's completely believable that kids would get excited about the possibility of a pet and take it to their secret clubhouse and eat ice-cream sundaes together. I mean, who wouldn't? 

I didn't find this remotely convincing, I'm afraid.

I have to admit a sneaking preference for Peter Sís' other picture book biography, the Galileo-focused Starry Messenger, primarily for the colours (as I recall, more blue-toned than sepia) but this is still excellent. Sís is one of my favourite illustrators - his work is so detailed and so layered that it's a pleasure to look at, and I'm slowly collecting all of his picture books.

Given that this is a picture book, the biography itself is fairly limited. Sís is working within the constraints of the form, after all, and there's only so much that can be fitted into 44 pages. However, it's enough to capture interest, and the focus on exploration and curiosity and hard work - as well as, let's be honest, all the animals and fossils! - is genuinely compelling. I love books like this, books that are written in the certainty that kids love science and want to learn about it, and I'm equally certain that the parents who buy this for their offspring are going to take equal pleasure in reading it for themselves. It's such a visually appealing book.