octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

There's no other to describe this but strange, I think - it's beautifully, compellingly eerie. I don't quite know whether or not it's magical realism, but it feels as if it ought to be, containing as it does fantastical elements that illuminate political response, this case to environmental change. A nine year old refugee goes to sleep for ten years and wakes up with a locust embedded in her forehead; she wanders the desert, making friends, seeing them all exploited and mostly burnt alive, and in the end... well. I don't want to spoil it.

Admittedly, this is a difficult book. It's so very abstract that half the time I'm only guessing as to what's going on, and to just how much can be traced back to the influence of a contemporary world. It's hard not to read some of what happens here as an analogue for nuclear warfare and radiation, but even so I'm not sure that's accurate. I think the key point is sterilisation; the searing of a land and a people, in order that others may thrive. Which is a deeply unfair and tragic thing, as Bobis so clearly feels, but the horror of it all is somewhat mitigated by the dreamy, beautiful prose. 

I don't know why I liked this so much more than the first volume, but I did! Maybe it's due to the fact that nearly the entire book takes place in 1940 or so, as the peculiar children try to navigate London during the Blitz. Maybe it's because this book is a whole lot grimmer than the last... not that I like grimmer books best, but the litany of disaster here leads to a shocking conclusion that, for once, I didn't see coming, so that was great. 

I think, though, that my favourite thing about this is that we get to spend more time with the children, which gives them more of a sense of personality than we got in the last book, where so much was being introduced. Bronwyn, I think, has rocketed up to top spot for me - what a thoroughly decent person she is! If they were all like her, that horrible - and horribly illuminating - incident with the ambulance might have gone another way entirely. On the less interesting side, I'm afraid that our protagonist Jacob is the least compelling of the bunch. He's not unlikeable, and I suppose he suffers somewhat from being the straight-man narrator in this bunch of very unusual kids, but I'm mostly interested in his relationships with his parents and with Emma. The latter, unfortunately, seems as if it may be doomed... 

One of the reviews quoted on the back cover of this book says that Lynda Barry is "the chronicler of an entire generation's romantic confusion," and if that doesn't sum up this collection of comic strips, nothing does. It's all very loosely themed around romantic relationships - or, more accurately, disappointing romantic relationships, presumably because they're funnier. There are dreadful dates here, awkward parties, sex therapists, the resentful experience of an insomniac married to an inveterate snorer, body issues, old arguments, creepy bosses... More than anything, it's a series of snapshots, drawn to invite you to cringe and sympathise and laugh at the same time. 

It's a fun, quick read, I must say. Quicker than a lot of Barry's other work, if only because the drawings are bigger and there are less words there. She does have a tendency, in some of her books, to cram in a lot of drawings and texts, but this was relatively easy on the eyes, which means I hardly squinted at anything. And now I feel old, having said that, but at least my medicine cabinet doesn't look like the one in here. Small mercies. 

This was very enjoyable, and not at all what I expected. That sounds as if I didn't expect it to be enjoyable, but that's not the case! From the blurb, which started off with the coven protecting the crown, I thought it was going to be a sort of fantasy/spy type thing, MI6 but with witches. It isn't that at all - while the coven in question does seem to be MI6 with witches, that role is firmly in the background here, as the coven splits over questions of identity. Basically, it's sensible people versus TERFs in the realms of witchcraft, which goes to show that even if you've got superpowers you can't always have nice things. 

Set thoroughly at the centre of this ideological conflict is a group of five women, childhood friends, who are connected by past experiences if not always by mutual liking and respect. The expectations of the coven - what it is, and what it should be - lie between them, and things get treacherous and then violent. Happily, the right side wins, although it's clear at the end that the conflict has seeped into the next generation. I want to feel sorry for Snow, as she's a product of her mother's bigotry and fate, but that girl is going to cause trouble in the future, I can tell. That seems organic, if depressing, but I wasn't prepared for the final cliffhanger, and I don't know that I enjoyed it much. I would rather, I think, have ended on a slightly more positive note, and saved the cliffhanger stuff for the next volume... which I will certainly be reading. 

There's a really interesting premise here: that academic studies in feminism are so removed from the diverse practical experiences of feminism - particularly the experiences of people who are poor, or marginalised further by race or sexuality - that they become alienating. I can't say that I ever studied feminism at uni, but I am an academic writer, albeit in areas related to science fiction and science communication, and my frustration with how deliberately exclusive, and deliberately elitist, my work has to be in order to get published gives me sympathy from the get-go.

There are a lot of different approaches taken in this book - short essays, personal reflections, dialogues, the occasional poem - and nearly all are by young Indigenous writers who are either (at time of writing) studying at university themselves, just finished studying, or have deliberately removed themselves from that environment. A common thread is how undervalued they feel within academia, and how their experiences are often dismissed as almost irrelevant because those experiences are judged as lacking sufficient theory to be valid. Personal experience in activism, and in feminism, they point out, is key. It's a common sense approach, and one that prioritises clear communication, so naturally it is largely ignored within academia (I say, with a certain tired amusement of my own). 

Lots of interesting, thoughtful stuff here. The piece that stood out most for me, though, was Megan Lee's "Maybe I'm not Class-Mobile; Maybe I'm Class-Queer: Poor Kids in College, and Survival Under Hierarchy" which is a painfully honest exploration of the mixed feelings that result from academic opportunities that drive wedges between students and the communities that they come from. 

I do love ocean-based horror. Admittedly, the ocean horror I've previously come across is more concerned with sharks than with curses, but there's just something so potentially disturbing about water in horror narratives, particularly when it's imbued with malevolence. Partially, it's because water is just so necessary to life, and partially it's because it floods and seeps and is just generally difficult to get away from. In the case of this book, it's also almost infectious, in that the people who are killed by it, and whose bodies are corrupted by it, act as if they're zombies, shambling around and infecting other people with spurts of absolute violence. It's great. Not for the people being attacked and drowned, of course, but this is the kind of weird, creepy stuff I like to read so it's good for me if not for them.

I do think that the end is a little abrupt, and that the origin and resurrection of the curse could have been fleshed out a little more. Weird and creepy counts for a lot with me, though, so on balance these small issues don't bother me that much. 

Volume two in this little mini-series, and that series is pretty disconnected so far. The two books both take place during the Dominion War, but otherwise they're largely focused on different crews doing different jobs. That's not a criticism on my part, just an observation: it's an interesting way to do a short series, and I'm enjoying it. 

This particular book is based on a series of DS9 episodes, and although it's been a while since I've seen the show, some of it's vaguely familiar. The part I remember most is the part that does not fit very well here, though. Worf's relationship with his son, Alexander, comes off in the book almost as a separate short story that's been tacked on at the end - a short story, furthermore, that lacks a satisfying ending. Given the constraints that Carey is working with, creating what is essentially a novelisation, this is hardly her fault, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to restructure the text version of the story, or even leave it out altogether or shift it to a different volume, rather than dump it all at the end.

Aside from that, it's a quick, fun read. Well, as fun as stories about wars going very badly can be... but then again, I do know the ending. 

I haven't read anything in Yang's Tensorate series before this, but I found this book (and the other novella that's paired with it) on the shelves of the local library, and the covers were so pretty I had to pick them up. I note that that beautiful cover has a quote from The New York Times that calls the book "joyously wild," but as far as I'm concerned there's precious little joy here. This is more tragedy than anything else.

It's beautifully written tragedy, I do admit, and I appreciate that the novella format has shaped the story, with chapters linked to specific years in the life of the protagonists, rather than a great epic sweep of detail that, frankly, I can often do without in fantasy. This is an epic fantasy story in bite-sized form, and Yang's done a really admirable job shaping the story so that the genre isn't constrained by the length. It's well-considered and clever, and I enjoyed the world-building. I was, in fact, all set to give this four stars, until it got to the end. Now, I'm not saying the end here isn't a valid choice, and I'm sure it does resonate with some people... but this particular choice is one of my pet hates in fiction, and even an author as clever as Yang can't make me like it. Some people are monsters, and they seed death and destruction on everyone around them, and if you have the chance to rid the world of their murderous presence and don't take it, because you fear the effect such a taking will have on your heart or soul or whatever... suck it up, you whiny bitch! I'm sorry, but when your hideous mother is responsible for the mass murder and torture of the people around her, and you have the chance to stop her and don't... you're partially responsible for every awful thing she'll do in the future, and I don't care if you worry killing her will define your character forever. I especially don't care if you don't even bother to consider the unending misery she will inflict on others in the future because of your idiot decision.

Akeha wussed out in the end, and I do not admire him for it. 

I read and reviewed each of the four comics collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The three star rating reflects the average of the individual ratings. It does not reflect that Year One started out very well indeed and went downhill from there. The whole thing was mildly interesting - and the narrative structure in that first comic was outstanding, really - but the absolutely pedestrian handling of Jim Gordon's even more pedestrian relationship with Essen sucked up too much time and page space and made an otherwise decent character look not only exceptionally stupid, but lacking in basic integrity.

Points for the bat swarms, the cat saving, and the careful handling of little Holly, though. 

You're Barbara Gordon. You are very, very pregnant, and you live in shit city, but at least you've got a decent husband, even if he does spend all his time at work and you're fighting about that. Still, he's honest, or so you think, until he starts being blackmailed because he's having an affair with a colleague and has to confess this to you, which is bad enough, but then you and your newborn are kidnapped. The baby is ripped from your arms and taken away, and you get him back eventually, but what is your reaction to this avalanche of horror that your husband is partially complicit in bringing down upon you?

Who the hell knows, you're not that important. You don't get to react to a single part of it. Not once. 

If I'm supposed to feel sorry for Jim Gordon I don't. The potential for blackmail could have been seen a mile off. He's extremely stupid here, and reckless with other people's lives, and if there is anything designed to put me off a supposedly heroic protagonist it is stupidity and recklessness. What irritates me the most, though, is that the whole story is framed around him - and Batman of course, but then I'm not bitching about Bruce Wayne right now - as if he is the one that I'm supposed to empathise with. I doubt I'm Frank Miller's target audience here, but even so... I am not empathising.