octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I've always liked Cilla McQueen's poems, although I think my favourite of hers remains the early collection Antigravity. While The Radio Room doesn't quite have the same level of excitement and whimsy, parts of it still sparkle in the same way - "Despite the recession / it is unlikely that poetry prices will rise" McQueen comments dryly in "Soapy Water," to which I let out a snort-giggle that's inescapably informed by my own poetry endeavours. 

More often, however, this collection is concerned with landscapes and leavings, the way that we alter and abandon the environment around us. It's not exactly sombre, not exactly bleak, but there is I think a clarity of observation that has been honed from that early collection, and I find it thoughtfully appealing. No surprise given my reading tastes, my favourite piece here is "Altar (Elements 1)" about the extinction of the Great Auk. It's sad and lovely, though the very different "Soapy Water" is a close runner-up. 

I've been meaning to read this for literal decades at this point, so finally swiped my Mum's copy and spent the morning with it. Loved it. I don't know that I quite sympathise with Kahu's desire to love her miserable grandfather - her granny, to me, is much more appealing, and doesn't have to be prodded by apparent death to give even a smidgeon of affection to the poor kid. That being said, the characters are so finely drawn that it's almost hard to believe how short the book is: less than 150 pages in this edition.

It's just beautifully written, and the narrative voice is both entertaining and compelling. I ended up going to read about the historical whale stranding the narrator describes, and honestly, I wish I hadn't. Chainsaws, really?! I suppose the horror of that scene acts as a counterbalance, though... something to illuminate, for the reader, just how much of their own sympathy is given over to the whales, and to Kahu. 

This isn't a patch on The Wrath of Khan, but it's still enjoyable - I think I liked it more than the movie, to be honest. Although I've forgotten most of the movie, so it can't have been that great. The strength of the adaptation is how well it portrays Kirk as simply not being entirely ready to be captain. He's immature, hotheaded, and thinks he's kind of above the rules that the rest of Starfleet has to play by. In all fairness, sometimes that pays off, but it's unsustainable and frankly dangerous over the long run. The Captain Kirk of that original five year mission could be impulsive, but he was more often calculating and measured. He was a good captain - and Kirk, here, is not so much. He redeems himself with the big sacrifice at the end, but Foster's characterisation is almost too successful. Spock ends up looking like the more competent option for captain, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Extra points for Scotty, though, who is willing to resign - and does - because he's not willing to cut corners in a way that would endanger the ship and his crewmates. It's thoroughly admirable of him, and it's nice to see him highlighted in this way. 

As with most short story anthologies, there were a couple here that I bounced off entirely. For the most part, however, many of the stories here were interesting and enjoyable. Some, like "The Nag Bride" by A.C. Wise and "Laughter Among the Trees" by Suzan Palumbo, were genuinely compelling, and it's fair to say that the compelling outnumbered the rest.

There seems to be a strong focus here on family, particularly the dissolution of family. I suppose it has to be dissolution, the undermining of the home, because this is dark fantasy and horror, and so a cohesive, surviving family unit is probably something that's not going to be especially prevalent. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest, if this is a strength of the collection or not. On the one hand, there's a very cohesive feeling about the anthology, which I find appealing, but on the other I have read some fantastic dark fiction over the past year that I would personally have rated above some of these stories, although some of those wouldn't have fit so well within the fractured family theme. I guess that's the problem with "Best Of" anthologies, though - they're so very personal in their approach, and so very subjective. I will say that I tend to feel a lot more sympathetic to Guran's choices than I do to an editor such as, for example, Gardner Dozois - earlier this year I read a "Best Of" anthology put together by him and was not enthralled - so that's something to keep in mind when reading anthologies in the future. (It's always interesting to see where tastes coincide... and where they don't.) 

There's something very mythic about this story; I imagine that it's heavily influenced by works like The Golden Bough, in that the king of the title is so associated with the land that he is sacrificed to it. It's a very interesting way of thinking about kingship - blood and monarchy and soil - and if there's not a great deal that's especially surprising about it, the story's still nicely told. I do think that the addition of the stag element is a little unnecessary, though. It doesn't seem quite as well integrated into the wider story as some of the other elements. 

I have to admit, I'm a sucker for treasure hunt stories, where characters have to follow clues in order to find the prize. This is one of those stories, so I enjoyed that, even if the kids did take a ridiculous amount of time to solve the Liberty Bell clue. I also think that the person who fell for the trap set by the kids must be the most gullible side character ever in this series, but nevertheless... it's a treasure hunt book. 

I've pretty much stopped reading these stories in order at this point, in favour of whatever volume's available at the library at the time, but the new authors continue to be almost more entertaining to me than Warner's stories were. I liked most of hers, but they did get a little unbalanced character-wise, and I enjoy when each of the four Alden kids has a meaningful role in the story. (Okay, that's something of a lie. I'd be happy for more Violet-centred books, because she's the kid I like most.) 

The kids are off to the Alamo, where - quite by chance - they get roles as extras in a movie about the historical events that happened there. They appear to be the only extras and, not gonna lie, I was pretty certain that Grandpa Alden had cooked up the whole experience for them, but apparently not. It's a quick, easy read, as all the Boxcar books are, but this one does have a little more misdirection in it than some of the others, which was interesting. There were multiple options for who the culprit might be, although largely due to the fact that many of the adults involved in making the film were consistently more childish than the actual kids! 

This is a memoir of the two years that Kaysen spent in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. I enjoyed it - the beginning, in particular, was excellent - but as the book went on I found that the short chapters went one of two ways. They were either relatively straightforward recollections of life at the hospital, including the other patients, or they were Kaysen's more reflective observations on the nature of her illness. I have to admit that I found it much more difficult to connect with the latter. It seemed a bit woolly compared to, for example, Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, which I read last year and thought excellent - Jamison took a heavily science-based approach, which I found particularly appealing.

I'm not sure what it says about me as a reader, and as a person, that I found the character sketches of the other patients - often shocking, often tragic - much more compelling than the reflective sections of the text, but I suspect what it says is nothing good. It does feel a little like getting... not entertainment, exactly, but interest, from other people's miseries. 

I appreciated the clear amount of research that went into this, but I have to admit that my over-riding impression is that it's unnecessarily complicated. Granted, over-complication is something to be expected from political thrillers, and very probably truth is stranger than fiction, but still. The impression remains.

Other than that, I enjoyed it. The story, which follows a law clerk working for one of the Supreme Court judges, trying to unravel the horrific relationship between genetic research and defense priorities, is entertaining and well-written. One of the main themes here is ethics in science, which is something I always find compelling, especially in how science and scientists can be used by governments to further their own agenda. As a biologist myself, it frankly disgusts me that any number of distant colleagues choose to work in weapons research, for instance. It clearly disgusts Abrams as well, although she's more concerned with the legal aspects than the scientific ones, I think, which is understandable given that she's a lawyer herself. I am, it must be said, far less fascinated by the role of the US Supreme Court than the author, but then I don't live in the US and the horrific clusterfuck that is that country's political and legal systems have less immediate impact on my life. All of which is to say I found the scientific elements more interesting than the legal ones here. 

I read and reviewed each of the thirteen Miss Marple stories collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. Most of the stories got three stars from me, with only a few earning a little less. On the whole, though, it was a likeable collection. While it could at times get a little repetitive - I think there may be three stories that hinge on body swaps? - what I appreciate about it the most is Miss Marple herself. I like that she's both so entirely provincial and so entirely intellectually ruthless. She's very, very good at summing up characters, and the details that she uses to solve cases are nearly wholly domestic, to do with laundry or cooking or gardening, and as such are details that the more typical detective types present in the stories just completely miss. 

It must be terrifying to share a village with her, though.