Category: Reviews

Review – Tam Lin

Posted May 28, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Tam Lin, Pamela Dean

How to review this? I have complicated thoughts. For a start: I love the ballad(s, there’s various versions), and I’ve read quite a few Tam Lin retellings now too. I expected to like Tam Lin, per Pamela Dean, quite a lot, because it came highly recommended and because of all the other things I was told were involved in this retelling — the ‘college as magic garden‘ aspect, primarily. And there’s a lot to like about that, because I did experience university as a magical garden in many ways, and I loved the utter focus on college, on learning, on cramming in everything you can. And that lovely feeling of finding something you didn’t expect to love through study and the right teacher, and all the possibilities, and…

It is a bit thick with references; though Jo Walton’s review suggests that it never leans on the references without explaining them, sometimes that led to the weird sense of being told the plots of all the plays mentioned within the novel. It’s a little bit infodumpy, even though it suits the whole atmosphere.

And I do like the portrayal of women being different and finding ways to get along anyway; young couples working out things like contraception and how to fit in seeing each other between their studies; men and women forming friendship groups together that aren’t completely rife with sex and jealousy (although there is some of that).

I liked the slow unfolding of it, too. It helped to know (again from Jo’s review) that the pacing of it is based on the pacing of the ballad (not sure which exact version), with the build-up taking most of the song and the denouement a verse: that is very much how it is in the novel, too. And I did like that I needed to watch for the references, keep my eyes open for the hints, that somehow ghosts and people who could’ve stepped out of Shakespeare’s plays came to seem normal.

It did frustrate me, though, how long it took for there to be payoff — how long it took for it to be confirmed as a fantasy novel, and not as, say, Janet being unstable (I knew it wasn’t that, but I apparently like my fantasy more overt), and how long it took for the two characters who turn out to be the main ones to actually really find each other. It took literally until 85% before I could see how the relationships could possibly work out like the ballad.

When it did come together, it was very satisfying. But it takes time, and you have to want to spend the time in the magical garden, spend time with these very young, very serious, very earnest characters who are just beginning to go about meaningful work and love and relationships. I can see why some people bounce off this one, I really can. I think without the strong recommendations I received plus my knowledge of the ballad (and my love for Fairport Convention’s version of it!), I might not have stuck it out.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – The Vintner’s Luck

Posted May 27, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Vintner’s Luck, Elizabeth Knox

Originally reviewed 18th July, 2009

My flatmate recommended this to me with much high praise. And read my copy before I got my hands on it, and cried at it a lot. I have to confess, when I started reading it, I didn’t really get into it. The story is about a man who agrees to meet an angel (or an angel who agrees to meet a man?) at the same time every year, for one night every year. The story focuses on these meetings, so what we get are glimpses into a life. It isn’t just the meetings, but it focuses mostly on them, rather than the minutiae of daily life. As a consequence, it takes time to get to know the characters. I think it was that that kept me from getting too deeply into the story.

It actually reminds me of a line from the first page: He took a swig of the friand, tasted fruit and freshness, a flavour that turned briefly and looked back over its shoulder at the summer before last, but didn’t pause even to shade its eyes. And then: Again he tasted the wine’s quick backward look, its spice — flirtation and not love.

Not only is that a lovely thought, and it tastes nice to synaesthetic little me, but it kind of describes how I felt about the book at first.

I didn’t really know what to expect from the story. There’s a little mystery in it, about some murders that happen in the area, and then there’s the love story between the man and the angel. I found both of them compelling. There are also glimpses into heaven and hell, provided by Xas, the angel, and the intervention of Lucifer — things that really point at a greater plot, I suppose, but we see it framed in the same way as Sobran, the human, does.

The love story is the part that really captured me, I have to say. It isn’t easy, Xas holding back from it, and then Sobran becoming angry and not wanting to see Xas, and then Xas’ disappearance… There’s enough of it to catch hold of your heart, though, and when you’re reaching the end of the book, it really, really begins to hurt.

I didn’t actually cry, although it was a close thing: I was desperate to read the last twenty pages, so had to read them under my grandparents’ eagle eyes, and that wasn’t conducive to a full-on sob fest…

I really do love the last lines:

You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I’d supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity.
Impossible.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, romance

Review – Silk: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon

Posted May 26, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Silk: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon, Robbie Thompson, Stacey Lee

The main complaint I’ve heard about this (and Spider-Gwen, and Spider-Woman) is basically “oh noez, they’ve got WOMEN all up in my comics!” To which I say: “heck yeah, about time.” Silk’s first solo volume is reasonable, though the themes are familiar — Jessica Drew had some of the same adjustment problems from her spidery-past, Cindy has to learn to do the whole great-power-and-responsibility thing, coping with a normal life, and so on.

It’s fun enough, though not outstanding, and somewhat hobbled by the fact that it almost immediately gets swallowed up by Secret Wars at the end of the volume. That certainly didn’t have any kind of positive effect on solo storylines (not that I’ve seen anyone being fond of it elsewhere, either). Almost universally it just suddenly happens and derails all vestiges of solo plot.

Stacey Lee’s art is great, though — fluid lines, good expressions; it works for me very well, and I hope she illustrates future issues.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel

Review – Cruel Beauty

Posted May 25, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Cruel Beauty, Rosamund Hodges

There were some aspects of this Beauty and the Beast reworking I found really interesting — mostly, the Greek mythology that was mixed in. It didn’t feel like a typical woodsy-castle-y faux-medieval-y setting, which was refreshing, and the references to the Kindly Ones — aka the Furies — worked pretty well for me. The complex relationship between Nyx and her sister was actually kind of interesting too; it’s not straightforward, because everything is not as it first appears, and neither of them are honest to each other.

But otherwise, there were a lot of aspects of this I just couldn’t get into. Both the relationships the main character had just felt off, despite the attempt to show a dichotomy between the two where one, to borrow Tolkien’s phrasing, ‘looks foul and feels fair’ and vice versa (except mostly acts/feels; they’re both handsome, as I recall). The romance tends to the insta-love trope, and given that Ignifex never makes himself really pleasant (unlike, say, T. Kingfisher’s Beast in Bryony and Roses).

There are some interesting aspects, as I said, but looking back at it as I write this somewhat belated review, it definitely never came together for me, and it didn’t really become memorable either.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, romance, SF/F

Review – Tehanu

Posted May 24, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin

This still wasn’t a favourite book for me in the Earthsea sequence, because it deals so much with the consequences of what happened to Ged in The Farthest Shore. Considering I’m not a great fan of that plot (though I have come to appreciate it more as an artistic choice and for the way it changes Earthsea), I guess it’s not surprising that I’m not such a fan — even though, like The Tombs of Atuan, this brings the female point of view to the fore and deals with some of the issues of sexism in the world.

The brief glimpse of Lebanen as the young king is lovely, and the understanding Tenar and Ged eventually come to is too. The stuff about the friendship between women, and the way Tenar realises that she’s totally failed to raise the kind of man she’d like for a son, also works pretty well.

But it takes away Ged’s dignity — and that, more than the loss of his power, I dislike intensely. He’s always been proud, and here… he can’t fight, can’t save himself. He needs Therru and the dragons.

So as with The Farthest Shore, I see the thematic importance. I just… don’t like it that much.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, Ursula Le Guin

Review – The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

Posted May 23, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Sydney Padua

This seemed like a comic perhaps more for my partner than me (and lo, she did love it), but I wanted to give it a try too after hearing some stuff about it on the radio… somewhere. And Robert kindly sent me his copy to peruse, so I had no excuse (and didn’t really want to find one anyway). I like the art — it’s cute, but not too cute; lively and character-ful, without feeling like caricature. And the sense of humour suits mine pretty well too.

If you’re looking for a serious what-if about the Difference Engine, then this isn’t really your show; the comic itself is more about the characters, their endearing characteristics, their partnership. It’s based heavily on material surviving from the correspondence of and commentary on Lovelace and Babbage, but the events themselves are fanciful, often ludicrous, for the sake of a fun rather than “educational” comic. It works well, if that’s what you’re here for — and even if you aren’t, there’s a whole wealth of info contained in the footnotes and the appendices.

One thing I did find awkward about reading this was how busy the pages are. Text! Everywhere! Here’s a footnote there’s a footnote and another little footnote! My brain is not very good visually at all, so I found it cluttered and distracting at times. Colour might have helped; maybe not.

Still, overall fun and yes please to Ada Lovelace as hero.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics

Review – The Movement: Fighting for the Future

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

The Movement: Fighting for the Future, Gail Simone, Freddy Williams II, Chris Sotomayor

Volume two of The Movement is a little disappointing in that it’s also the last volume. Some things are wrapped up, but really you’re just left feeling this frustrated sense of how much has been left undone, how much potential exists within this mismatched group of characters. I love the fact that the story itself brings this up, in a way: people warn Virtue that her team doesn’t fit in with how existing superheroes work and think, and she says essentially, well, one day they’ll have to. Change is coming.

Change is coming, and maybe The Movement was a little too soon, a little too blatantly diverse, a little too brazen about being a new sort of superhero team. Maybe it’s just that it’s difficult to launch a new set of superheroes without serious support — some of which the team gets, in Batgirl’s appearance in a couple of issues. Successful as the Young Avengers have been, they don’t have a current comic either, while Cap and Iron Man and all the mainstays are going on (and on, and on).

I love what we did get, though: a complex team made up of people who complement and clash with each other in equal measure. It’s a team of diverse voices, not only in terms of skin colour and country-of-origin and sexuality, but in terms of political ideals too. Katharsis is fairly blatantly not down with some of the more liberal ideas held by other members of the team. Burden comes from a religiously conservative background and is only just opening up to new ideas. It’s not just a liberal hippie love fest.

And on a lighter note: I love that we saw the hinted-at date between Virtue and Rainmaker. Cute.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, DC, Gail Simone

Review – Grave Secrets of the Dinosaurs

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

Grave Secrets of the Dinosaurs, Phillip Manning

Finding an intact skeleton of a dinosaur is rare enough: some of the famous specimens that look complete actually aren’t, with gaps filled in by guesswork, or from other skeletons. Partial finds are much more common — but even then, compared to all the dinosaurs that ever lived, the number that survive in some form as fossils is tiny. Every find provides new clues: an impression of skin, the hint of a feather, the presence or absence of marks which tell us how dinosaurs stood or walked.

This book is about the holy grail of paleontology: mummies, i.e. remains with soft tissue preservation. They can tell us an astonishing number of things about a corpse, and they can even include preserved biological molecules that can be tested — perhaps even DNA. This book goes through the past discoveries which have fuelled hope for soft tissue preservation, and given a lot of food for research in themselves, but the main point is an almost totally preserved specimen from Dakota. It includes background into the research and the discovery, and then a few chapters on what’s happening now. Frustratingly, it went to print before the research was complete, so readers might be left wondering if the Dakota mummy was ever successfully scanned, etc, and what that might have revealed.

It’s very much a work on an evolving situation: there’s more to learn from Dakota than is contained in these pages. That’s for sure. But that could be the case for years and years to come, so I’m glad this book exists and is accessible to laypeople.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – Kalpa Imperial

Posted May 20, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Kalpa Imperial, Angélica Gorodischer, trans. Ursula Le Guin

Originally reviewed September 30th, 2012

If you like Ursula Le Guin’s work, it’s worth trying Kalpa Imperial, even though Le Guin isn’t the author, only the translator. She was obviously the ideal choice of translator for Gorodischer’s style; there’s no sense of distance from the story, or rather stories, that you often get with translations.

It’s a bit of a strange book, a collection of connected stories that don’t follow on from each other — often the only link is in the common setting of the Empire That Never Was. Consequently, there is little character development (though the narrative voices are to some extent characters in themselves), and each story is just a window on a world that doesn’t exist, with very little context and very little pausing to explain. If you want to know everything about everything, this will prove more frustrating than anything, I think.

But I think it was well done, anyway, with the mythic tone and the air of half-remembered history. Some of the stories are more fascinating than others, but I enjoyed all of them.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday

Review – The Sin Eater’s Daughter

Posted May 19, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 9 Comments

The Sin Eater’s Daughter, Melinda Salisbury

The cover for this book is just gorgeous, and between that and the first chapter, it really drew me in. There are some interesting concepts and politics, actually: I was worried from some of the reviews that it really wouldn’t hit that mark, but the way the queen uses the people around her, even her son, does actually manage to hit some interesting notes. There are a couple of twists I wasn’t really expecting, but in that way where they made sense when they happened, so kudos on that.

Overall, though, thinking about it now, it feels rather thin. I liked the concept of Twylla’s power and was quite prepared for it to be real; the way the plot plays out is actually a little disappointing, since the original idea is so tantalising. It’s also pretty heavy on the romance, and though there are one or two good scenes, mostly I wasn’t that taken with it. The title is disappointing, too; Twylla might be the sin-eater’s daughter, but that’s not really important to the plot, doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things. A lot of what I found interesting — like the sin eating — was background, or not real, while the elements I was least interested in were focused on.

Enjoyable enough, but not something I’m desperate to read more of. I’m glad I haven’t already picked up The Sleeping Prince; I might in the end, but not immediately.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, romance, SF/F