octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I think this is the best of the trilogy - even better than Salt, which I really enjoyed. I think what I like best about Gee's YA books is the sort of unsentimental, unflinching nature of both story and prose. It doesn't froth and get over-emotional; it doesn't look away from cruelty and horror and consequences, but it doesn't wallow in it either. And there's rarely any sickly-sweetness in the protagonists, or any dependency. Hana and Ben are half-feral and they're not sorry. Nor should they be - and it makes for really refreshing protagonists.

I'm not sure that I liked this as much as Salt, the first in the series. For one, it seems to have shifted from sci-fi to fantasy. For another, I think that Xantee and Duro aren't as vivid as Pearl and Hari from a character stand-point.

That said, there's still a lot of good things here, and one can see the progression from Under the Mountain, an earlier, unrelated (if thematically similar) book of Gee's. His characteristic cool, clean prose is as refreshing to read as ever, and the underlying grimness of the setting is well-done without being over the top.

I think this is my favourite NZ poetry collection! Vivid and imaginative and beautiful.

I grew up reading Maurice Gee, and loving all his books. This new YA effort is just as enjoyable, though with a characteristically vivid and horrifying undertone. The slow execution of the forced radiation workers might be too dark for some YA authors, but Gee is the man who had his twin protagonists commit genocide to save the world in Under the Mountain, so no surprises there.

This book is just so frustratingly close to perfect. It's very original, and the language is beautiful. I didn't have any trouble getting into it, contrary to what some other reviews say - it's a quiet, lovely read that's almost mesmerising. I was fully prepared to give it five stars.

And then I read the end.

I don't know. Perhaps Sonja is meant to be the note of discord, the piece that's out of place. And perhaps there's some musical tradition (I don't know, am not very musical myself) which has a giant long build-up and then concludes in a squashed, rushed little run of notes. But the ending let the whole thing down for me. Not the bittersweet nature of it, because I thought the reaction of the general population was spot-on, but... I don't know. It felt wrong to me, rushed and squashed, as I said. Which is a shame, as everything before the last 15-20 pages is wonderful.

This is a beautiful book to read, and I mean that literally. The cover is beautiful, the paper is beautiful, and I covet the illustrations, dark and insular as they are. A lot of the poems in here I've read before - in The Merino Princess, I think, and while I don't recall its contents exactly there seems to be a lot of overlap. One of Hall's strengths is imagery, and there's some in here that will stay with me for a while: particularly the blue-eyed eel. Those things creep me out.

I liked this, but not nearly as much as Manhire's collection Lifted, which I think I read last week. It's not my favourite collection of his, but I find when reading that there's the odd poem - more often, the odd verse within a poem - that really speaks to me. The first verse of the title poem "Milky Way Bar" is for me the finest of the book (and may be my favourite thing that Manhire's ever written; I want to copy it out and pin it to the wall above my desk for inspiration), but there's also the apologetic return of memory in "Brazil", the death and absence of "Phar Lap"...

I haven't read all (or even most?) of Manhire's work, but this I think is my favourite of what I have read. There's something spare and cool and lyrical about it that appeals to me. Don't know why, exactly, but it does.

Lovely, informal poetry. Heavy on the imagery, which does seem to be a characteristic of Hall's work. Whenever I read something of hers it usually takes me about 10-15 pages to sink into the piled-up nature of it, image piled on image like lots of little tesserae, but it's vivid and colourful and I like that.

I liked "the bomber pilot" poem best I think, also "duck" and "modo de volar".

Surreal, fractured, often fantastic and set like stones into their environment, this collection of shorts (plus the odd poem) is like a collection of little puzzles. It's certainly interesting to read - rising to fascinating in some cases.

Though as with any short story collection, some of the included tales are better than others. My particular favourites were the truly excellent "Floating Words" and "The Eyes of the Moonfish".