octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I've been doing a CSI rewatch lately - albeit a very slow rewatch, there are so many seasons! - but I didn't realise there were tie-in novels. I picked this one up and gave it a go and really quite enjoyed it. The story was nice and pacy, there were lots of science details, and all the main characters had decent parts over two main cases. It was fun.

I honestly couldn't tell you if the science in here is accurate or not, having never even heard of using sulphur to cast shoe prints, for example, but it sounds plausible and Collins has a handful of sources cited in the back of the book so I'm prepared to go along with it. I liked that he took the opportunity to play with different settings as well: while most of the night shift team remained in the desert environment of Vegas, Grissom and Sara were at a remote location in New York state, working with a Canadian criminalist who had experience collecting evidence in snowy conditions. This made a nice contrast, with new scientific techniques being used and shared; I liked the one with the leaf-blower. I enjoyed the original series because of the emphasis on science, so it's nice that this tie-in novel, at least, shared the same focus.

If I come across another one in the series, I'll be sure to try that as well. 

Unutterably tedious twaddle. No wonder they call this pseudoscience.

Look, I don't know anything about psychoanalysis. I admit it. I picked this up, thinking "Oh, a journal by a woman who studied with Freud, this might be interesting" and it was very much not. This is not your average journal. This is academic recapping, and even her reports of the constant low-level bitching between practitioners is not enough to inject a sense of life and motion into the prose. Which is a shame, as when the author's not waffling on about what sounds like absolute rubbish, her prose is lucid and entertaining. Unfortunately, ninety-five percent of this is her brain on psychoanalysis, and it is unconvincing woolliness all the way through. I don't understand what she's on about... which wouldn't be a problem, necessarily, except I'm not convinced any of them understand it either. They sound like people convinced of their own bullshit more than anything else, and there's so much here that is clearly claptrap (albeit I at least am writing with the benefit of hindsight). 

I am fully prepared to read wrong or confusing things so long as the prose is entertaining. To my great regret, this is a translation. I wish it were not. The opportunity for someone - anyone! - to encourage Andreas-Salomé to take her fascination with human sexuality and reflect on the multiple meanings of the word "turgid" would be too great to ignore.

Never again. 

I didn't realise that this volume had an alternate title! Clarissa Oakes is a much better title than The Truelove, anyway, especially as Clarissa is such an interesting character. I don't say that she's an emotional void, because she clearly isn't, but it's rare to come across a character - particularly a female character - that is so basically goodnatured and yet so isolated. She's just so very self-reliant, on an emotional level, and while the tragic backstory is supposed to act as explanation, it's less compelling than the present state of the woman herself. I suspect she'll turn up again. I also suspect, to be honest, that her husband is not long for the world... she's so much more interesting than he is that he's practically a non-entity beside her.

I would very much like to see a story where Clarissa and Diana spend a good amount of time together, but I doubt I'll get it. This is primarily, after all, a story about that central male friendship between Aubrey and Maturin, and the more the books go on the more I appreciate it. (This does not apply to the battles and sea manoeuvres, which remain a lengthy bore. No wonder Maturin still doesn't know anything about ships. I bet he glazes over as much as I do.) I appreciate, too, the portrait of Aubrey as age catches up with him. He's verging on getting promoted out of the action, perhaps, and it will be interesting to see how he responds to that. 

The poems collected here are sometimes very short - in some cases, only three lines - which is a nice change from the last couple of poetry books I read. There's a strong musical influence, particularly jazz, that's present here, and I wonder if my reading experience would be different if I knew a little more about that musical genre (something to add to the list of things to listen to!). A number of the poems did strike me as especially musical; I wonder if any of them - like the fantastic "Song for a Banjo Dance" - were ever sung, because I'd like to hear them if they were.

I've never read Hughes before, but had heard of him, and I can see that his most anthologised poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," is in this collection. Apparently he wrote it in "ten or fifteen minutes," which just makes me jealous, honestly, considering the number of absolutely indifferent sentences I had to delete from my own writing today. Fifteen minutes!!! I can see why the poem's so popular, and while I admire it, I have to admit that it's not my favourite of the poems collected here. That would be "Young Sailor," which I love for the rhythm and the repetition of joy, and secondly "To a Little Lover-Lass, Dead" for the sad, quiet imagery.

Well. This was depressing. I enjoyed it, but I think it's safe to say that this is my least favourite of the trilogy. It's very much focused on the influence of the Mafia in southern France, and the trail of dead bodies they leave behind them, and you know: I don't know anything about the Mafia, but I'm prepared to suspend disbelief and find this all plausible, because I'm fairly sure Izzo has done his research. It's not the plot points here that were losing my interest. It was Montale.

And that's a bit of a shame, because I've quite liked him (especially in Chourmo), obstreperous and morose as he is. What I think I found most sympathetic about him is how much he clearly loves his city, and for the first two books, anyway, Marseilles loomed over the narrative, this constant and redolent background presence. I don't get the same feeling of urban presence in Solea. Instead, it feels as if Montale's focus on the city has been entirely overtaken by his focus on women. I'm not opposed to romance in these books, and his regrets over lost chances came across as absolutely convincing in the first two volumes of the series. In Solea, however, there's endless moping over four different women, one of whom he's just met, and I'm sorry: it's repetitive. And the book's only short, so there's not a lot of space in which to cram all this moping... it just spills into everything. I stopped caring. Give me his relationship with Marseilles any day of the week over this. 

This isn't great. I will say I appreciated that it zipped along at pace, and I very much enjoyed Dr. McCoy and the guest doctor Davis, but it's full of plot holes. (How does the virus spread so instantaneously between species? How do the people of Perry's Planet not see violence, until the end confrontation when Ami miraculously does? How is Scotty's accent so inconsistent?)

The curious thing about it is the prose, though. It seems to change a few chapters in. Close to the beginning, I wondered if I'd stumbled into a children's book by mistake - very simple sentences, and a strong tendency to short and uncomplicated words. By the end of the book the phrasing and vocabulary seemed far more sophisticated. I don't know if there was a change in editor partway through, or if someone else had input on the first few chapters in some way, but the difference caught my attention. 

I read this book once as a kid, and never touched it again until today's reread. I hated it then - I picked it up, I think, because it was a book about animals, and was promptly confronted with poor old Boxer being betrayed to the knacker's yard. It horrified me. I didn't appreciate anything else about the book as I was too miserable for Boxer. It honestly put me off reading it ever again, which is a bit of a shame as I love Orwell's work generally. His 1984 is one of the greatest scifi books of all time as far as I'm concerned.

(I felt much less bad for Winston than I did for Boxer, but then I was (am) soft about animals. Humans at least did it to themselves, or so I reckoned.)

Reading it again, Boxer is still a tragic figure. And yet there's something very Leopards Ate My Face about the whole barnyard which has limited both my sympathy and my emotional response. And yes, I know, it's a metaphor for human activity, Boxer is not really a horse and so forth, and while perhaps the clear non-animal nature of the animals has dampened my misery response... there comes a time when you've got to admit that doing foolish things comes with consequences. The pigs were clearly evil early on, and the time to resist their depredations was early on. Failing that, later is better than never. 

Even so... poor fucking Boxer. The sheer ingratitude of it!!! 

I read this years and years ago, long before I started logging reads here, and I have to admit that, having just read it again now, the only thing of it that I remembered was the big bovine creature in the restaurant, arguing to be eaten. And you know, if I was only going to remember one bit, that was the best. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the rest of the book, even if I didn't love it, but there's something about that cow. I just find it very very funny, and the last "humane" comment just makes me cackle. The entire restaurant sequence, actually, is a very bleak piece of comedy that's often as cutting as it is entertaining. 

Marvin remains the best character by far, though. He's like a space age robotic Eeyore, and it's no coincidence that Eeyore was my favourite in the Hundred Acre Wood as well. There's something about that deadpan level of mopery... 

I read and reviewed the two books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. They're books 2-3 of a 4 book series, and while I've given a (very cursory) look I can't find the others collected with them anywhere, which seems an unusual choice on the publisher's part. Although they are essentially standalone books, so maybe it doesn't matter that much. I hope a box set or something does exist, though, because these are so entertaining that I'd like the lot for myself! That sentiment is entirely down to Blossom, a feral little girl who combines psychic power with brutal honesty, essential good nature, and a very funny voice. Love her.

Rating is, as always, an average: both Ghosts I Have Been and The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp got four stars from me, so this does too. 

I wish I'd known these books existed when I was a kid - I would have loved them! That love would be entirely due to Blossom, who is an absolute terror of a child and is therefore deeply entertaining. Her psychic powers are used mainly, it has to be said, to troll other children (and they thoroughly deserve it); she's a very funny little girl, possessed of an absolute and brutal honesty... at least when it suits her. She's fantastic.

I was a little hesitant to read this one, even given how much I enjoyed the previous two volumes, as the blurb indicated that Blossom would time travel into the future, and with the best will in the world that's not one of my favourite tropes. Blossom in the 1980s is still fun, but it's admittedly the least interesting part of the book. Luckily, it only takes up maybe a quarter or so of the story, so much less of a focus than the blurb indicates, and the rest is her life back in 1914. That's the time that best suits her, I think, as she's so very self-possessed there that she comes off to best effect. Not that she isn't self-possessed in the future, but it's a little muted because her surroundings are so unfamiliar and she's not always sure how to react to it.

I must say, though, the Dreadful Future of the title? It's not really Blossom's. For some of the kids there, she is the Dreadful thing, and again... they deserve it.