octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This novel, about Florence Maybrick, the wife of one of the men suspected of being Jack the Ripper - from the title, I don't think it's giving anything away to say that in this book, that suspicion is proved correct - is mildly likeable but also sincerely frustrating. That is, I think, down to the main character. Poor Florrie has all the brains and survival instinct of roadkill, and she's never met a chance to help herself that she doesn't turn down. Granted, Purdy is somewhat constrained by history, and I've never read Maybrick's memoir of her time in prison, so I have no knowledge of her personality. She might well be as Purdy has imagined her; the alternative is that Purdy's used artistic license. I don't know, and I'm not sure it matters.

In many ways, Florrie here reminds me of Philippa Gregory's excellent portrayal of Katherine Howard in The Boleyn Inheritance - Katherine comes across as a good-natured, ignorant, and extraordinarily shallow girl thrust into a deadly situation and it's easy to feel for her. The thing is, Katherine dies at seventeen years of age, or thereabouts, so she never gets the opportunity to grow up. Florrie stays that same simpleton all her long life, and Purdy's portrayal of her middle-aged self weeping over her husband's grave, perfectly prepared to forgive his horrible actions because she loves him... the woman's an idiot. At least, this character is an idiot. The woman she was based on may not have been, but this story of her life... it's worth reading if you're bored and don't expect much. 

A collection of short comic strips that together make up a sort of composite graphic novel. Like most of Barry's work that I've read, it's noticeable for two things. The first is that everything's from the POV of a kid or young person - in this case, the sisters Maybonne and Marlys - and this is evident not just in the voices of the narrators but in the art, which very much looks like a children's scrawl in places. (I don't particularly love Barry's artwork, but it's still very clearly considered.) Barry's child-voice has always struck me as enormously effective, precisely because it's so realistic. The kids, especially Marlys, bounce from topic to topic. It's random and a little weird and dead-on recognisable. 

The second is that this voice is used to talk around topics that the kids don't fully understand, issues such as date rape and homophobia and how to feel when your country's at war. Barry is very, very good at this. This isn't a children's comic. It's a comic that uses children to communicate with other adults, and to force them to think. It can be quite funny in places, but more often it's bleak, even a little tragic, especially as this family is totally dysfunctional, and the kids live with grandma after being abandoned by both parents.

I think my favourite comic in here is "Sorry Story," in which the girls' brother Freddie writes a book report about colonialism. He doesn't quite understand colonialism, so he's describing everything as an adventure story, one in which brutality is on full display. It's horrifying and sad and very clever all at once. 

The first volume of a four part mini-series set during the Dominion War, and it's with the TNG rather than DS9 crew, which is a little bit of a surprise though I suppose it shouldn't be. After all, Picard and company were caught up in that war, too, so it's interesting to see it from a new angle. 

The pacing's fairly good and the plot is reasonably compelling, although Riker's storyline comes across as filler - he's stuck with the ship at a starbase, waiting for repairs, and has a brief relationship with someone we'll probably never see again outside this series (that's if she even survives it). Nothing out of the ordinary for him, certainly nothing as interesting as Picard and Geordi surgically altered to appear Bajoran, and traipsing through Dominion territory with Ro Laren, looking to sabotage the enemy's war effort. The third storyline, that of a group of captured Starfleet officers who are being used as slave labour, works well, although it's no surprise to see it intersect with the rest where it does. There's an underlying sense of tension and danger, and it's rather grimmer than the usual tie-in fare, but still worth reading. 

I like Andrea Nash. I really do. I find her genuinely compelling, and she's got a fantastic backstory - tragic, but fantastic - which sets up all sorts of conflict in her present day life, as she tries to navigate her shapeshifter status through the lens of profound trauma. I am interested in that story. I want to see more of it, and I like to see her slowly claw her way to good mental health. As with nearly every other story in this series, however, I am consistently less invested in the romance. Boudas may live for romantic drama but I don't, and I honestly spent much of the book hoping that the incipient love triangle would end any other way than it did. Truthfully, I was rooting for Roman. Not because of any deep investment in his character or anything, but because he's open and laid back and doesn't seem that interested in creating drama for the sake of it with any potential romantic interest, even if he is a priest for the god of death. I would also have taken Andrea deciding that, no, she needs to work on herself a bit more and that relationships with people who try to hurt you are not worth fighting for, but of course she goes for the least appealing option of the three.

I will say, though, that Kate and Curran became significantly more tolerable once they got together and stopped that interminable squabbling. They still disagree now, of course, but it's less a feature of the book, so perhaps it will be the same for Andrea. I'd rather see more of her difficult relationship with Auntie B., though. 

A quick, fun novella where a necklace made by dwarves starts strangling people, and Kate has to sort it out. At this point, I don't care who's writing or what story it's in: wearing dwarf jewellery seems like a bad, bad idea. Does it ever turn out well? It seems like one bare step below accepting food from fairies, and it very clearly belongs in the "no thank you" basket.

Admittedly, the wearer here doesn't get much of a choice. He's seven years old and his mum's willing to be rid of him so on the necklace goes, poor little kid. Luckily for Roderick, some sympathetic shapeshifters and some in-it-for-themselves-but-still-willing-to-team-up vampires are on the case, and no surprises, there's a happy ending for him. Andrews can get pretty grim in these books, but they're yet to end with the murder of a primary schooler, so that's something. I will say, though, I'd like to see a spin-off novella or something about Dr. Doolittle, who is a consistently welcome ray of sanity every time he turns up. 

I'm slowly working my way through the Read Around the World challenge, trying to expand my reading, and while trawling through my local library for possibilities, I came across this graphic novel from the Ivory Coast. It's for kids, but I don't care: kids books are great. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's based on Abouet's childhood experiences, so I understand, and the main character's a little girl called Akissi, who spends her time getting into trouble. She fights with her brother, she feeds the neighbour's baby garbage stew (he looked hungry! so she made stew from things she found on the ground, as most kids do - my sister and I used to make Ewey Stew from mud and flowers and silverbeet and so forth, and it was, indeed, ew), she gets a pet and loses it because she won't keep it on a leash... that sort of thing. Akissi is appealing and funny and kind of gross, as most small children are - she actively tries to get head lice, and gives herself worms by eating food dropped on the ground - but that just makes her the more recognisable. 

 This is the first of three short graphic novels for kids, if I've got it right - I got the collected version from my local library - and the only one, so far (apart from the collection?) that's in English. Which I suppose is an excuse to practice my very terrible beginner French, should I come across the others. It's more of a comic format than a graphic novel, with very short little stories that work as chapters, albeit disconnected ones, in Akissi's life. She's a small girl living on the Ivory Coast, and despite me never visiting there her life is instantly recognisable - Akissi desperately wants a pet, and squabbles constantly with her brother. She's a wee bit of a tattletale, is Akissi, and she's got a horrible habit of eating food that she finds on the ground. Honestly, wherever you are, if you look at the little kids roaming around you, you'll see the similarities. 

The whole thing's goodnatured and appealing and some of the illustrations are very funny. In the first part, a stray cat steals a fish that Akissi's supposed to deliver to a family friend, and the cat's expressions are just hilarious. 

 

Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. I've shelved this as historical fiction, despite the fantastic elements towards the end of the novella. The transformation of the priest is something that could be interpreted in multiple ways, I think, but my own interpretation is that he just went insane, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving character. It's the worst fate for him, so I think that's possibly influencing my classification - I want him to come to an awful end! And insanity is no doubt the end that he would hate the most.

Generally, though, this is a bleak little novella, set in 1880s Iceland. Everything is cold and miserable and lonely, and people are terrible to each other, with one major exception. I can't even say that Fridrik, who is one of the two decent people here, should have been more centred within the narrative, because of the fox and the priest, who are the other two main characters in this very sparsely populated fable, he is the most admirable and the least compelling. He's still interesting, mind you, but I was invested in that horrible priest getting his comeuppance, and more invested still in the fox. I'd never heard of blue foxes before this - or at least I have, under the name of Arctic foxes, but I didn't realise that some of them could appear blue, so I've learned something here. That's always good. 

I must admit that I am generally disinclined to read books about law because the few that I've tried have been turgid beyond belief, but this was outstanding. Mikaere is a law academic here in New Zealand, and this book is a collection of her papers, all of which are themed around Māori law and the teaching of Māori law. It should be dry. It is not. It is angry and confronting and lucid - all academic prose should be this readable! It is also fascinating, and enormously informative. I live in New Zealand, and you'd think I would have grown up with a lot of this but, not being Māori, I was never expected to learn it and was therefore never taught it. That, frankly, is a disgrace, and one of the many legacies of colonialism that needs to be tossed as soon as possible. 

Because Mikaere is an academic, a lot of the papers here revolve around teaching methods. Specifically, teaching Māori law to both Māori and Pakeha students, and the different challenges of doing both. One of the conclusions that she draws from this is that there are benefits to teaching these two groups separately, with the option of different tutorial streams within a paper, for instance, and given the stories that she tells from her own teaching experience that honestly seems like a rational alternative. Her time at Waikato University, for example, trying to help build a genuinely bicultural law school, comes across as challenging and frustrating, interspersed with small hopeful moments. As I said, I'm not familiar with law texts or law schools or anything like that, so a lot of this was outside my experience in a number of confronting ways, but I'm so glad I read it. What a stimulating book this is! 

One thing I particularly enjoy about the earlier Star Trek books is the length. They seem to be shorter than the newer ones, or at least they read shorter. Technically, this one's nearly 300 pages, but the font is so large I got through it in less than two hours. There's not a lot of waffle here, is what I'm saying, and that makes this particular novelisation a good, fast-paced read. Pilot episodes always have a lot to do, of course, introducing all the different characters, and like the television episode, Emissary does it adequately, although the lion's share of attention goes to Sisko, which is fair enough. The rest of the characters get more basic sketches, but that's something that will round itself out in later novels, I expect.

Basically it's just a short, fun read. It reminded me of bits of the episode that I'd forgotten - it's been a while since I last rewatched the series - and it's making me want to go back and watch it again.