Category: Reviews

Review – The Moon of Gomrath

Posted September 30, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of The Moon of Gomrath by Alan GarnerThe Moon of Gomrath, Alan Garner

Flashback Friday review from 12th August, 2009

I liked this book better than the first book, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Maybe that’s because I’ve already had some of the world building from the first book and I know kind of what to expect, though. It was weird to me that it was a sequel, but it completely ignored the ending of the last book. There was virtually no reference to it at all, which is amazing considering the total lack of resolution I felt at the end. The only references are in a recurring enemy — the Morrigan — wanting revenge, and the fact that the characters are the same, plus the backstory about the sleepers in the cave.

The mythology in this one was interesting, anyway. I’m amused at how often the concept of the Wild Magic and the Wild Hunt comes up in fantasy books — here, in the Fionavar Tapestry, in The Dark Is Rising… I like it. The descriptions of Susan riding with them, and the way she gets left behind and feels both joy and anguish, are lovely.

Again, I felt a lack of resolution at the end of this book. Both books just end, with no reactions from the characters, nothing. Just. An end. It’s weird, I like things to be rounded off a little better. It’s not that they stop with big plot things left to happen, but they stop without making it feel satisfying.

It also feels like there should be more books in the series — you have all these comparatively little events, dealing with Grimnir and the Brollachan and the Morrigan, but throughout there’s the threat of Nastrond hovering over it, and the idea of the waking of the sleepers, but nothing happens with them. It feels like the focus is on the wrong thing. In one way it’s nice to have a big story hovering in the background, but when you know you’re never going to find out how that story resolves, it’s not so nice. There’s plenty of room for sequels, but I read that Alan Garner never intended for there to be another book. There’s so much that feels unfinished, though…

At least he didn’t write a shoddy page long epilogue in which we find out exactly what happened to everyone in as few words as possible.

This book is fun enough to just read, but I didn’t really get emotionally invested in it. Characters can die and I don’t really care. Not good!

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Mortal Engines

Posted September 29, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Mortal Engines by Philip ReeveMortal Engines, Philip Reeve

The first line of this book is just… how can you not want to read it? “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”

I tried not to concentrate too much on how this city-eat-city world would actually work — to what degree the cities were alive or just mechanised, the actual practicalities of Municipal Darwinism, etc. It’s a fun idea, and it’s more fun to just roll with it and enjoy the adventure. It is aimed at younger readers, but there’s a surprising amount of emotional impact here — not to mention some actual gore. People don’t survive, it’s messy, and there are shades of grey — Valentine’s done something despicable, but he loves his daughter, and is inspired by her to maybe change his mind… Hester’s driven by revenge, unpleasant to everyone, but she slowly develops.

I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps especially because it didn’t treat kids like idiots who can’t handle death and destruction. We know they can and do; just turn on the international news, if you’re in doubt. The end is not exactly a happy one, though it is one with hope for a future, and things aren’t neatly tied up. Disasters aren’t averted entirely. It’s also a fun world, and the pacing means it just races past.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Chalice

Posted September 28, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Chalice by Robin McKinleyChalice, Robin McKinley

I don’t know why I keep coming back to this book — one I originally gave just three stars — but I think this is probably the fourth time I’ve read it. This time, because I saw a copy for three euros in Dublin and just had to, had to, had to; up to now, I didn’t actually have my own copy, which you can imagine was annoying and of course I had to rectify it.

I think the thing is, it’s such a warm story. Mirasol and the Master’s relationship is so tentative, so careful; their attempts to reach out to the land they’re bound to and heal the things that have happened are so conscientious, untutored, sometimes even desperate, and yet they never give up. And I love all the domestic details: the honey, the woodrights, all the sensory stuff that comes with the honey… And the idea of the Chalice, both the office and the object, her duty to bind the Circle and all the little details of how to do that.

I also think it’s a very hopeful book, in the same sort of way as The Goblin Emperor or Uprooted, other books I’ve liked more recently. Okay, there is a conflict, but the outcome is almost totally positive, and the main characters seek as much as they can to avoid conflict. It’s gentle, calm, and thus calming.

I imagine I’ll reread it again sometime in the future.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – The Door into Sunset

Posted September 27, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Door into Sunset by Diane DuaneThe Door into Sunset, Diane Duane

I really like that this series is out there, full of characters outside the traditional fantasy mold, full of female characters, in a world created by a goddess. And it helps that there’s dragons and that the most important relationship through the books published is that of Freelorn and Herewiss. And again, that they have a realistic struggle to adjust to new things, to find their feet in their relationship and keep it ticking over without letting it stagnate, to find room for each other. There are some really great scenes, like the section in Lionhall or some of the battle scenes.

One thing I really, really liked was the characterisation of Cillmod, and even Rian. They’ve been boogeymen for so long, and this book finally expands them a little. Cillmod turned out to be especially interesting. It was great to see some ambiguity, some signs of another side of the story.

But. I don’t know. For me, it just doesn’t quite click. Sometimes I feel like the issue of the Goddess is hammered home too hard, too frequently; sometimes I want the characters to stop thinking so much about getting into bed with each other, because hey, there’s actually a war going on; sometimes the tone just feels pompous or… or something I can’t quite put my finger on, but in any case find offputting. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it — I wouldn’t have finished the three books which have been written if I didn’t — but I’m not sure it needs the fourth unwritten book, and I’m glad enough to leave it here.

Rating: 3/5

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Classics via daily serial

Posted September 26, 2016 by Nicky in General, Reviews / 0 Comments

Seeing Maximum Pop!‘s review of trying out the app Serial Reader gave me an idea for a discussion post, since it looks like that’s one of the things people are looking for around here! Serial Reader, if you hadn’t heard of it, is an app which breaks up various classic books into chunks of about 10-15 minutes reading time, and delivers them to your phone at a set time each day. I started using it a couple of weeks ago, and have already read Ayn Rand’s Anthem, and got almost halfway through Austen’s Emma.

Screencap of the Serial Reader app on Android

Do I like the experience? Yes, actually. My problem with some books has been that I don’t really want to sit down with them and spend any appreciable time with them. Like Anthem, for example. Whereas reading just an extract a day — which takes me rather less than 10-15 minutes, usually — is easy. The divisions usually come in reasonably sensible places, like the end of a chapter or poem, and because I get a notification every day, I find myself reading classics very coherently by installments. I don’t think it’d work for me if I just tried to read the book a chapter at a time or something: it’s the little nudge that makes it easier.

My best experience is perhaps with reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry; I’ve never particularly enjoyed it, but with a very short selection every day, there’s no harm in focusing on what you do get. And while I haven’t suddenly been converted, I’ve enjoyed it more than I expected.

There’s quite a good range of books available on the app, too. One of my next up is On the Origin of Species, because it’s really high time I read that. But there’s also Sherlock Holmes stories, Gothic novels, American classics, H.G. Wells…

I’m not so sure about paying the (admittedly small) onetime fee to get access to the ‘read later’ and ‘read ahead’ features — after all, most if not all of these books are public domain, and you can get them free and read ahead as much as you like — but they’re not really essential to the basic idea, which I plan to stick with. I just keep my list of books to try later in my BulletJournal!

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Review – Off The Map

Posted September 26, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Off the Map by Alastair BonnettOff The Map, Alastair Bonnett

This was something of an impulsive purchase, and it turned out to be lighter reading than I expected. Each section is very short, sometimes just three pages long, and it leaves you wondering why he included such-and-such a place if there was so little to say about it. After all, the point of this book is to highlight interesting stuff about places that don’t exist (that either never have, or no longer do, or can’t officially, or…), so surely it’s worth spending some time on each one. Instead, a lot of the sections come across as perfunctory, included more out of a sense that they fit the theme than because they’re interesting.

There are some interesting facts in here, and I do enjoy the way Bonnett cross-references with fiction — when he talks about St Petersburg/Leningrad, he mentions China Miéville’s The City & The City, for example. But it was too much of a grab bag of not-always-interesting facts, and sometimes it also came across as rather preachy. Not that I disagree with Bonnett on many of these things, but still, the tone is offputting.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Stories of Your Life and Others

Posted September 25, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted ChiangStories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

I’ve been meaning to read Ted Chiang’s stories for ages, since his work is clearly adored by a lot of writers I admire and whose taste I trust. And I wasn’t disappointed at all: there’s a reasonably formal feel to the writing in these stories, something careful and precise, and for me that makes them particularly engaging. I guess other people might find that makes them fall rather flat, but to me it added to the poignancy.

My favourite stories of the bunch, by far, were ‘The Tower of Babylon’ and ‘Story of Your Life’. The others explore some interesting ideas, but those two interested me the most. ‘The Tower of Babylon’ is just a fun what-if — what if the Tower was real? What if the world was shaped differently to ours? And also, what kind of expertise and building would be needed to make this tower? How long would it take, and how would people cope? Examining all of this fascinated me, because Chiang obviously thought it through.

‘Story of Your Life’, well. I’m not sure how Adams and Renner’s film Arrival is going to deal with it, because for me the whole point is the narration, the calm regret and acceptance of the narrative voice. I’m not sure about the idea of language working that way (i.e. the different perspective to time being an aspect of the language, not of the structure of the aliens’ brains, and one which is transmittable to another species). But emotionally, the story really works, and of course it also leaves you wondering about the aliens, about what exactly they intended, what they wanted from humanity, and whether they got it.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A History of Ancient Egypt

Posted September 24, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of A History of Ancient Egypt by John RomerA History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid, John Romer

I don’t know much about modern Egyptology; it’s been a long time since I read exhaustively about the subject, and the books I referred to then were either for children or very out of date, albeit fascinating in their own way. (Christine Desroches-Noblecourt’s description of the treasures and items found in King Tutakhamen’s tomb held me spellbound for days at a time, and I frequently returned to it, fascinated by what we could glean of the boy king, and of Ankhasamen, his sister-bride.) This book kept some of the fascination of those books for me, though it deals with early Egypt, the very first pharaohs. That does mean it covers up to the construction of Khufu’s Great Pyramid, so it does include some of the very classic Egyptian things people think of, though not the gold-encrusted tombs of later pharaohs.

Because I don’t know much about modern archaeology in Egypt, I can’t really speak to the accuracy of Romer’s interpretations. There is an extensive bibliography, of course, and he steers away from some of the romanticised, imperialist assumptions of earlier theories. Still, at times I had no idea how solid a base his theories stood on: he seemed to spend a lot of time telling the reader what can’t be gleaned from the remains, and then building up some kind of story — a court organised around early pharaohs, controlling the flow of goods along the Nile — anyway.

On a purely stylistic level, it has some of the grandeur and wonder of the books I used to read, and finds wonder in the simplest carvings and burials as well as the feats of engineering, but the sentence structure… needs work. I don’t usually nitpick grammar, but there were far too many long sentences where the subject wasn’t clear, or which lost focus halfway through, or were fragments. Quite offputting.

I’m definitely interested in reading the follow-up volume, once it’s out!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Winter Book

Posted September 22, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of A Winter Book by Tove JanssonA Winter Book, Tove Jansson

A Winter Book is a collection of some of Tove Jansson’s less famous writing — i.e., this isn’t the Moomins. Instead, this is a selection of short stories written throughout her life, many of them autobiographical or otherwise revealing. The stories are generally quiet set pieces, often with vivid images at the centre — the girl rolling a stone home; the girl throwing her torch onto an island of floating ice and lighting it up, but too scared to jump across…

‘Quiet’ is definitely the word that comes to mind most; the prose (even accounting for translation) is unassuming and relatively down to earth. Things are just so.

The writing isn’t bad, but it’s not the sort of short story writing I actually really enjoy, though at times it can be done really well (thinking Raymond Carver).

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Sea Foam and Silence

Posted September 21, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Sea Foam and Silence by Lynn O'ConnachtSea Foam and Silence, Lynn E. O’Connacht

Received as a gift from the author

In favour of me enjoying this book: I love retellings, especially ones which add in a bit of diversity or something else that updates the story. Not in favour: it’s a verse novel, and in free verse at that. I’m terrible and tend to prefer really structured poetry. Oh, and Lynn chose to use emoticons in the text, which she had solid reasoning for, but I am apparently just a cranky traditionalist and it tended to pull me out of things rather than add to it — though it does add something to how to read the lines, where in some places I wasn’t sure quite how to take the tone. I wouldn’t have known whether I was right or wrong without the emoticons, so they’re not without purpose.

So what did I think overall? Despite being not-for-me in some ways, I did enjoy reading it, and I read it quite fast — I’m glad I didn’t follow the web serial version, because I am an impatient creature. There’s some awesome lines and use of imagery, and some things just come across beautifully: one example is the mermaid’s love of dancing, for instance, and another is the quiet bond between the mermaid and the prince.

I shouldn’t spoil the story, because at the time of writing (August) the web serial is still running. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed this take on the story, and especially the role of the Witch and her more complex than usual motivations.

Rating: 3/5

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