Review – Goldilocks and the Water Bears

Posted November 29, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Goldilocks and the Water Bears by Louisa PrestonGoldilocks and the Water Bears, Louisa Preston

The best thing about the book is that title. It’s just inspired. Unfortunately, it’s also misleading; actual tardigrades are covered in about three pages, buried in the middle of the book. Most of it is about the search for other life in the universe, what it might look like, where we might find it, and how it might survive. Granted, the blurb does say that, calling it “a tale of the origins and evolution of life, and the quest to find it on other planets, on moons, in other galaxies, and throughout the universe.” But still, I’d hoped for tardigrades to be a little more central, or at least more relevant than just another example in a litany of living creatures which can tolerate extreme conditions (or rather, what would be extreme from our point of view). At the very least, I was hoping for a survey of where in our solar system tardigrades could happily live. You can extrapolate that, but… I just wanted more water bears, okay?!

In terms of the writing, there are two especially irritating habits: one is a constant grammar failing, where the start of the sentence doesn’t agree in number with the end, and the other is an unfortunate habit of italicising key words in a way which gives the sentences really weird emphases. Sometimes names are randomly italicised, sometimes not. It’s not consistent and at the same time, it’s so pervasive as to be distracting.

(E.g. in the sentence above, Preston would have written, “There is two especially irritating habits”. No! That’s not… No! I can’t remember if she ever actually did it while stating a number as in that sentence, admittedly, but she would use “is” when there were two or more things being stated. No!)

The actual content is fine, if you weren’t hoping too much for more info on tardigrades. It’s a pretty workmanlike exploration of the concept of the Goldilocks zone and how it might help us identify suitable planets that are not our own.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted November 29, 2017 by Nicky in General / 9 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Dark Sky by Mike BrooksI only have two books left on my currently reading list! Kushiel’s Dart, though I haven’t made any progress since last week, and Dark Sky, though I haven’t touched that in aaaages. I have a new project now where I have to finish two books from my currently reading list before I can start a new one, and that’s been going really well. Once I’ve caught up, it’ll be “two books from a series for one new book”, to make sure I actually make progress with that too!

What have you recently finished reading?

Cover of The Godless by Ben PeekYoon Ha Lee’s Raven Stratagem and The Godless, by Ben Peek. The former was awesomesauce, even though I stalled on it a while for non-narrative reasons. I finished it and just… daaaaamn. The latter, eh, I do not love it. I enjoyed some of the worldbuilding, but I just didn’t enjoy the characters or feel that everything was necessarily explained properly in terms of the actions people took and why. Pretty important whether people are doing politics on a grand scale or just interpersonal relations.

What will you be reading next?

Cover of Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay GouldProbably Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould’s book about the Burgess Shale. That’s what I’ve got queued up as my break from fiction in general and my currently reading list specifically. (It’s not that I don’t want to read them, I’m just fidgety in all things and like having a bit of variation.

What are you reading?

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Review – Summerlong

Posted November 28, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Cover of Summerlong by Peter S. BeagleSummerlong, Peter S. Beagle

I fell right in love with this book straight away, for the unconventional romance between Abe and Joanna. I loved that they didn’t seem to be possessive, that they didn’t live together 100% of the time, that they had differing interests. I loved the way Abe knew Joanna. I really wanted the story to be about the strength of their bond, unshaken because deep-rooted. I really did.

Spoiler: it’s not. It’s about the two of them being changed, deeply and irrevocably, by a man and a woman who might just be Hades and Persephone. (It’s not much of a mystery, really, given how quickly the clues are given. I mean, as the reader you work it out quickly because you know Beagle’s a fantasy writer; it wouldn’t be obvious to the characters, by any means.) And that change includes their separation, seemingly also irrevocable. And I hated it. I’ve read that story with the young pretty girl who turns an old guy’s head time and time again, and I didn’t want to read it again. I wanted to read about two people who wouldn’t let life shake them apart — even when life or even a goddess tries to come between them.

So it’s not really the book; it’s definitely a matter of preference. And the strength of my reaction to the bond between Abe and Joanna shows how beautifully Beagle can write and observe his characters. It’s all wonderfully written, I just wanted a different story.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Silver Wind

Posted November 27, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Silver Wind by Nina AllanThe Silver Wind, Nina Allan

I didn’t enjoy The Silver Wind as much as the other novella by Allan that I’ve read, Spin, but then I kind of expected that — Spin is a take on the story of Arachne, after all, and I really enjoy well-done retellings. The Silver Wind is a bit more of a mystery; sort of a time travel/alternate realities story, I guess. It’s perhaps best experienced for yourself, to see what you make of the plot; it’s well-written, though, and despite the similarities between the stories that make up the narrative, each brings something different as well.

I didn’t love it, and I don’t think it was as finely done as Spin, but it was enjoyable and I’m definitely still curious to read more of Allan’s work.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Great Influenza

Posted November 26, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Great Influenza by John M. BarryThe Great Influenza, John M. Barry

Whew. The Great Influenza is a heck of a read: there’s a lot of information, and it takes quite a while to get to the actual point of the epidemic, because first it covers certain aspects of medical history. As with so many books like this, in places it becomes a sort of biography of the greats who were involved — it’s going to be interesting to see pop-science deal with the increasingly team-based approach to science, without central characters to pin the narrative on. In many ways, this is more history than science, though it does go into the discovery of the actual cause of influenza, the (lack of) treatments available then and now, the effects it has on the human body, etc. Still, it’s also very much about public health policy and medical practice: it is not just “oooh cool a deadly pathogen”.

Which, if you’re scoffing and thinking that flu isn’t a deadly pathogen, do think again. Even seasonal flu can kill those who are weakened in some way, or unlucky, and the 1918 flu killed from 50 to 100 million people in the years the pandemic ran through (about 1918-1920, to the best of my understanding). It’s difficult to predict how flu will mutate, because it does so all the time, and there are various different strains active in the population at different times. It’s also present in other host species, meaning we can cross-infect our livestock and pick up infections from them.

Flu is a problem, and it was a huge problem back in 1918 without so much commercial flight and recreational travel. The way it swept the globe then is nothing to what it could do now if we’re complacent. If you’re blasé about the potential of a flu pandemic like H1N1, I recommend this to change your mind.

There’s a lot of gory detail here about how the 1918 flu killed, alongside the more sterile descriptions of lab experiments and the dry series of events, and the nitty-gritty of how the influenza virus invades a host cell. It’s not exactly a thrilling read unless you find the topic truly fascinating (I do), but there is a lot here of interest.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Provenance

Posted November 25, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Provenance by Ann LeckieProvenance, Ann Leckie

Provenance is not Ancillary Provenance, for sure. The main character is very different from Breq — human, for one thing, and rather less capable, for another. She’s immature and she doesn’t yet know herself, her own capabilities or her own strength. I can sort of understand some reviews who found her a bit of a wet blanket, especially if you know Breq already. But I enjoyed the, well, more human character, in this context. Admittedly, though, Ingray is not my favourite thing about this novel. That would be Garal, by far, and Tic in second place.

But really, what I enjoyed was the societies built up for the story to take place in: the fact that children aren’t gendered, but choose their permanent name and declare their gender as young adults, once they feel comfortable and sure. I enjoyed the handling of that, the care people gave to getting the right pronouns and respecting people’s choice — and the odd moment where someone changes their name as an adult and most people ignore eir preference, which gets called out by the narrative because the people who matter do respect it and just… As a queer person, all this acceptance just goes straight to my heart, and makes me feel like Leckie knows she’s writing for an audience that includes me and the people I know.

For that reason, I feel really weird about the reviews which complain about the “made-up” pronouns (they’re not made-up, they’re in use in the queer community already) or the lesbian relationship and say there’s no “point” in the relationship between Ingray and Teucris, or in Garal being a neman (gender neutral). I think the point is just that these are relationships that happen, identities people already claim, and the way we do things now in the mainstream isn’t the only way to do things. The point is, there are and can be worlds where everyone belongs.

But I don’t think it’s Leckie’s intention to use the story to make a point: the characters’ identities aren’t important to the overall shape of the plot. Perhaps part of the point is just you’re not in Kansas anymore.

The story itself was fun, though not as strong as the Ancillary books. To me this was more about the characters and the world, and I enjoyed it that way. If you want to see the Radch toppling, though, you’ll be disappointed. Though set in the same world, it has little to do with the Radch and is not directly related to the events set off by Breq. Still, Ancillary Sword should probably have clued you into that aspect of Leckie’s interests, focused mostly on the local events and how they affect characters we’ve come to know and love.

I can see why people won’t love this, especially if they’re looking for hard SF.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 25, 2017 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Good morning, folks! As I write this, I’m about to take the little mister to the vet for what might be a fungal infection, so you get an adorable picture of him with my ereader — which he somehow turned on while I was out of the room…

Photo of Breakfast, a brown bunny, apparently looking at a page of text on an ereader.
“Yes? You are disturbing my reading.”

Update: it is not a fungal infection. He’s just an idiot.

New books

Cover of Jackalope Wives and Other Stories by T. Kingfisher Cover of Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

Got these through being a patron of Ursula Vernon’s on Patreon! Woo.

Read this week

Cover of The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams Cover of The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley Cover of Locust by Jeffrey Lockwood

Cover of Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner Cover of Horns of Ruin by Tim Akers Cover of Imagining Head-Smashed-In by Jack Brink

Four stars: The Dragonbone Chair, Swordspoint.
Three stars: The Stars are Legion, Locust, The Horns of Ruin, Imagining Head-Smashed-In.

Reviews posted this week

–The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch. A worthy and exciting entry to the series, but oh man, I want the Faceless Man plot to wrap up. It’s not that it isn’t awesome, but I’m worried about it getting stretched too thin. 4/5 stars
–Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott. Classic cyberpunk with a lot of queer people. It’s slow-paced, but that works for it. 4/5 stars
–Spin, by Nina Allan. A fresh, if not surprising, retelling of a certain myth I enjoyed a lot. 4/5 stars
–The Rabbit Back Literature Society, by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. Male-gazey and unfocused. 2/5 stars
–The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, by Philip Jose Farmer. An interesting reworking of the original story, perhaps best enjoyed if you’re familiar with Verne’s work. 3/5 stars
–The Uses of Enchantment, by Bruno Bettelheim. Decidedly outdated and based on somewhat ridiculous Freudian concepts, but surprisingly enjoyable to read. 2/5 stars
–Friday’s Child, by Georgette Heyer. A fun romance, as you’d expect, and I got rather caught up in what would happen even though really, you know the happy ending is inevitable. 4/5 stars

Other posts

–Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’m Thankful For. What it says on the tin.
–WWW Wednesday. The latest and greatest on my currently-reading pile.

How’s everyone doing? Leave me a comment and don’t forget to link your STS post or weekend wrapup; I always visit back as soon as I can!

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Review – Friday’s Child

Posted November 24, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Friday's Child by Georgette HeyerFriday’s Child, Georgette Heyer

If you’ve read a couple of Heyer’s books, you know what to expect. You recognise the character types as they appear — the charmingly innocent heroine, the dishonourable but charming villain, the various prototypes for her heroes… Friday’s Child is of the “marriage of convenience” school, in which Lord Sheringham marries a childhood friend, Hero, more or less on a whim to spite his family. She’s loved him all along, of course, while he is monumentally unaware of having any feelings towards any woman, and certainly doesn’t expect to love his wife (though being a noble Heyer male, he will of course do his duty toward her).

As ever, it’s the detail and Heyer’s wit that carry a story that could be formulaic. I both laughed and cried at Friday’s Child, I’ll confess, sometimes at more or less the same scene. Sherry’s friends and their loyalty to him and to Hero are both funny and endearing, pretty much all the time; there’s something very pathetic about Hero’s adoration of Sherry, and the way he treats her (being angry with her for behaving exactly as he’s told her is right), which is funny in some scenes and just terribly sad in others. I forget which friend of mine has noted that Heyer is one of the few writers who can make a rather silly character one you sympathise with and root for, when you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to stand them at all. This is definitely true with pretty much all the characters here.

Ultimately, it’s not a deep novel of great philosophical worth, and it’s not the best of Heyer’s work in terms of originality or flair either. But it’s fun and it made me happy.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Uses of Enchantment

Posted November 23, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno BettelheimThe Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim

In terms of the psychoanalysis here, which is heavily based on Freud’s work, it sounds like a lot of rubbish to me. And if you know Bettelheim’s work from his work on autism, you’re not entirely safe from that here — he only mentions it once or twice, but it’s still jarringly wrong. Still, some of his analyses of the texts on a literary level do make sense, and his suggestions of how some people might apply their own lives in understanding and interpreting them are fascinating. As a literary work, The Uses of Enchantment is a bit of a classic, and if you’re a first year English Lit student wondering why Red Riding Hood’s signature colour signifies her coming to sexual maturity, well, it’s got you covered.

Reading it now, eh. I can appreciate some of the stories he tells about the way people relate to stories, even if the psychoanalysis behind it is laughable at times. (Warning: I was raised by a psychiatrist. I haven’t read Freud for myself, just absorbed a healthy disdain through my mother and what I encountered as a lit student.) Some of his comments on why fairytales endure while modern morality stories don’t work, too. But overall… shrug?

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Other Log of Phileas Fogg

Posted November 22, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Other Log of Phileas Fogg by Philip Jose FarmerThe Other Log of Phileas Fogg, Philip Jose Farmer

Another book I got from Bastian’s Book Reviews! Yep, there really was a whole suitcase full.

So I think this is the first time I’ve actually read Philip Jose Farmer’s work, despite being generally aware of it, particularly the Riverworld books. This is perhaps not the best introduction, because it’s Farmer playing with someone else’s toys, and he’s somewhat reliant on the source material: in this case, Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. It takes that story and then ‘reveals’ an underlying story, in which Fogg is part of a long-running struggle between two alien races who are hiding among humans.

It’s a fun idea, and perhaps more fun when you’ve read Verne’s work and can see all the little tweaks and the uses Farmer makes of the source material. I have read Verne, but not that recently; I’m not sure if reading it more recently might’ve helped in appreciating some of the fun Farmer got up to.

At any rate, I found by the end that it’s mostly fun as an idea, and the actual execution is better the further Farmer strays from the frame narrative of Verne’s book. I enjoyed this version of the detective, Fix, for example — his internal thoughts and his ultimately divided loyalties. But parts which just reprise Verne are not exactly gripping.

Rating: 3/5

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