octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I suppose the solution to having your detective continually stumble upon an increasingly unlikely body count as your series progresses is to take him out of the small town altogether. Take him out of the country, even, and dump him in the middle of a political nightmare in an unstable state. Poor old Wallander is completely out of his depth in Latvia, used as he is to the deeply organised Swedish criminal system, but for someone who knows as little about Latvia as I do, that's a sympathetic problem. 

I read the first in this series last week, and I continue to be interested in the very muted presentation of the narrative. The world just seems increasingly incomprehensible to Wallander, a sort of constantly grey effect, everything made nebulous (or worse) by a change he can't keep up with. He's so increasingly disconnected, a sort of constant mix of disappointment and bafflement, that he comes across as surprisingly approachable. I live on the other side of the world from the Nordic states, and this was written decades ago, but I suspect that if I came from that time and place, a lot of this would resonate even more than it's doing now. 

This was alright. I found it a bit slow, to be honest - I can't help but think that it would be a lot more readable if two hundred odd pages were cut, which is odd considering that I think part of it could have done with more fleshing out. Bosch himself seems fairly indistinguishable from a lot of other homicide detectives, but the unusual thing about The Black Echo is the use of techniques and history from the Vietnam War... particularly that part of it which took place in tunnels underground. This isn't something I know a great deal about, but I tend to think that it could have been exploited better here. I feel that these tunnels, which must have been absolutely horrific, weren't as threatening or effective a narrative device as they might have been. Perhaps if the rather tedious Internal Affairs storyline had been cut, there could have been room for a greater emphasis on the part of the story that was actually different from other books of this type. As it is, while the book passed the time well enough, I was never really engaged at any point. 

I have to be honest, there wasn't a single thing that I liked about this. I think it's supposed to be funny? (The inside back cover claims the author is a humorist.) But it's not funny, it's just bizarre, and not in a good way. I think the best description of it is extended flippancy, perhaps. I don't know, perhaps I'm just tired, but I get the same feeling reading this as I suspect I would if a distant elderly relative were to drink themselves silly and start trying to tell an interminable rambling story while politeness continually sabotaged any attempt of mine to escape.

I'm not sure even alcohol could make this amusing. 

Scrambling to hit my reading goal by the end of the year, which means I'm resorting to picture books. Though "resorting," in this case, is absolutely the wrong word, because Horton Hears a Who! is charming. I never really read Dr. Seuss until I had to teach it in a first year university writing class, so (better late than never) I am catching up on this giant of the picture book world, reading them as I come across them. It's amazing what leaks through. I've heard the phrase "a person's a person, no matter how small" any number of times before, but I couldn't have told you where it came from. Well, now I know! 

It's a message that comes across without being the slightest bit pedantic, and similarly, the book doesn't even sound all that preachy. I think it's because there's so much ridiculousness surrounding it - Horton sifting through a field of clover, for instance, or the bitchy kangaroos - that it balances out the earnestness of the whole central argument. Which makes it far more appealing... 

Very short, somewhat superficial guide to writing a memoir. There's some very basic information here, suitable for the beginner writer, but a lot of what's here isn't specific to memoir at all. Information on how to research and approach an agent, for instance, is useful but not helpful, if that makes sense. I read this because I was interested in knowing more about writing memoirs, and I was hoping for rather more focused information. I feel a bit like a lot of this could have been cut and pasted from a book about writing non-memoir genres, it was so non-specific. The most interesting thing about it was the short list of recommended memoir reads. Using these to give examples of things like curation, for instance, would have provided concrete examples of how-to writing that might have made this book more appealing to me. 

Well this is a supremely depressing little novella! It's written by Edith Wharton, though, so I should have known. But it's everything that I enjoy about novella form: a deceptively simple story and a ruthless focus on characterisation, all without a line of waffle. The ending is terrible - by which I mean it is almost too awful to contemplate. Death would have been better, and all that's left is three people, sharing misery and deprivation, because duty and poverty and utter hopelessness have left them no other way out. Even suicide has failed them. As I said, it's terrible, but it's also this polished little portrait of the utter degradation of loneliness. 

I enjoyed this, but I think if I had to describe it in one word, that word would be "muted." This is not a criticism. Wallander comes across as depressed - he's certainly got enough personal problems to be so - and the entire seething undercurrent of hatred against immigrants is presented as perpetual and unsolvable, a social ill that's part of the fabric of society, woven in so deep that it'll never be unearthed. None of this is actually cheerful, and the entire book seems to present itself in shades of grey: not that the basic understanding of good and evil is complex here, because it isn't really, but the social landscape seems sort of drained of colour, an endless drudge. How much of that is reality, and how much is reflected and magnified through Wallander's own quiet exhaustion, I don't know, but I did appreciate the effect.

I also quite enjoyed reading a more modern mystery that was solidly a mystery, without being taken over by thriller. I like thrillers, I do, but the biggest excitement here is when Wallander is chasing a suspect and falls off a piece of scaffolding. There's no-one coming after him, specifically, which is a nice change of pace within the various crime stories I've been reading the past year or two. 

Ho hum, another romance with a hero who has a Tragic Backstory that is supposed to excuse him acting like an arse. And another heroine who is Not Like Other Girls, those "mewling misses" who can't manage to think like a man. I am not fond of either of these things.

In fairness, the focus on sexual consent here is very strong, and I enjoyed that. If only the characters had accorded that level of respect to marriage. Well, I say "characters." I mean the hero, who conceals his circumstances from the heroine because she doesn't deserve the right to choose her own future, apparently, which is bad enough, but I lost every bit of liking that I had for him when he stooped to blackmail, or the attempt thereof. Minerva cut through that bullshit like a knife through butter, but personally, the grand gesture at the end isn't enough to make up for it. It's only enough for Minerva because she is, frankly, desperate. So desperate, she entirely overlooks the fact that, despite the grand gesture, she doesn't even get an apology for his behaviour. But she does get a man, and that's the main thing... even for Not Like Other Girls, apparently. 

Considering that this is four hundred odd pages long, I was able to zip through it very quickly. It's a likeable read, although I do think it's rather repetitive in parts. I don't know how many times Red has to have run-ins with the mean girls of her village, for instance, but I was getting a bit bored with it by the end. Her relationship with Granny, and her romance with Peter, is much more appealing... but still somewhat frustrating, as the back-and-forth in her dealings with both of them makes me kind of want to shake all parties involved and force them to use their words instead of continuing to flounder in secrecy. In Toliver's defence, however, she's working (particularly with Red and Granny) off an established storyline in Once Upon A Time, and so at this point in the timeline Red is required to maintain a certain level of ignorance as to what's going on. 

I read and reviewed each of the four novels collected here separately, so this is just for my own records. I rated them all three stars, so the collected rating's pretty easy to figure out. There was a lot of likable stuff here - the presentations of Bashir in Time's Enemy and Neelix in The Final Fury were both particularly good. The highlight for me, however, was Kirk's relationship with the invasion leader in First Strike. My favourite Trek books all have a strong focus on the idea of finding commonality with our enemies, and characterisation has always been a strength of Diane Carey's so I enjoyed that. 

I think the downside of these for me, and why they never really got above three stars, is that so much of them is fighting. And yes, this is a mini-series about war, I get that, but I'm just not that interested in reading about battles. Give me quiet conversations and characterisation over action scenes every day of the week! But it's still an enjoyable series, if a bit uneven in places.