Category: Reviews

Review – Shades in Shadow

Posted July 31, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Shades in Shadow, N.K. Jemisin

This ebook is a collection of three short stories set in the same universe as The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It revisits some of the characters and the consequences of the original trilogy, giving us a little more of Nahadoth, Hado and Glee Shoth, in turn. I’m fairly sure I missed out on some of the details because I haven’t read the books recently enough; I’m very sure I’ll reread this when I have, to fully appreciate it. As it is, though, they’re well-crafted stories, with the beautiful imagery and clarity I expect of Jemisin’s writing.

There are moments of characterisation that you don’t need to have recently read the trilogy to appreciate: Itempas, confronting change, his body treating it like an infection. Nahadoth, grieving and betrayed, betraying himself with the odd moment of affection for Tempa, with moments of regret. Glee Shoth, claiming her birthright, with strength from both her parents.

I think I liked the Nahadoth story the most, because it deals with that early aftermath of betrayal, and also most directly with Nahadoth’s nature. The various ways of describing him, “that which cannot be controlled”, etc, all work to crystallise the character, to get across in as few words as possible what Nahadoth is, and what he stands for.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, N.K. Jemisin, SF/F

Review – The Summer Tree

Posted July 31, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay
Originally reviewed 22nd January, 2012

Fresh from reading most of Tolkien’s work, and writing a gigantic essay on it too, I have a different perspective on Kay’s work. Especially when reminded that Kay worked on The Silmarillion with Christopher Tolkien. He has a lot in common with Tolkien, really: the synthesis of a new mythology (though not done as history, and therefore lacking all the little authenticating details that Tolkien put in) using elements of an old one (though Kay used Celtic and Norse mythology, and goodness knows what else). The comparisons can’t help but be made, though Kay sees his world as a tapestry and Tolkien as a song being sung.

I don’t think he makes his world as well as Tolkien does. I feel info-dumped, at times, rather than as if I’m just touching on the tip of a giant submerged mass of lore and wonder that even the inhabitants of his world only half-know. His gods are much more touchable, and more concerned with the individual fates of mortal men, and so less distant and thus less awe-inspiring. I think, perhaps more like C.S. Lewis, he tries to handle more than he can really weave together.

But, that’s not to say it’s totally unsuccessful. A book that can have me laughing at one moment and weeping not three pages later can’t exactly be classed as unsuccessful. His style is distancing at first — perhaps too much of a high tone, which Tolkien avoided with his hobbits — but there are some lovely lines and turns of phrase, and undoubtedly he makes me care about the characters.

Another hint that he’s doing quite well is that this is at least my fourth reread of this trilogy, though I could well have read it more than that.

Not perfect, but beloved all the same.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, Guy Gavriel Kay, SF/F

Review – The Winter Sea

Posted July 30, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley

It took me a while to read this one, and I think I was slightly less engaged than with the other books. The Scottish setting is great, and I’m always impressed by the sense of place that Kearsley conjures up. I wasn’t that big a fan of the love triangles and such, though; I-love-you-but-you-love-another isn’t one of my favourite tropes, and though it was light, it was played with her. I’d rather not have two romantic rivals.

It’s still a book by Kearsley, though, so it’s an enjoyable read: details of character and place to make you really feel like you know the landscape and the people, so you can picture the scenes. The supernatural element, well, I’m not a fan of memories-in-DNA as a plot point (Assassin’s Creed gets away with it only because I hold games to different standards, I think), so that link between the main characters wasn’t a big thing for me.

I feel like I liked both halves of the novel — the past and the present — well enough, but I’d have liked them more if either was the whole story. I’m not sure what could be made of the modern story, but it felt like the stakes were low, everything muted; it was just a frame story for the storyline set in the past.

There are some beautiful bits of description about the wintery sea, and I think whoever retitled this as Sophia’s Secret has no soul. The Winter Sea is a perfect title for it.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Susanna Kearsley

Review – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Posted July 29, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

Back to my Harry Potter reread! Woo. This was always my favourite of the four books I’ve read, and I was actually a little reluctant to finish it and move on to the next. I enjoyed Harry’s relationships with Lupin and the brief glimpse of his relationship with Sirius, and the way that their inclusion expands the world a little and gives us a hint of Harry’s parents’ lives, and also of the dark frightened world before Voldemort was defeated.

The Dementors, to me, are more frightening than Voldemort. At least as far as I’ve read in the books, he can’t take away your capacity for hope, even if he plunges you into despair. The Dementors… the moment when Sirius cringes in front of them, near the end, is horrible. They’re the first real signs of a darker touch to the wizarding world; something that can’t just kill you, but can steal your soul — Voldemort can’t do that.

The teenage drama of Ron and Hermione is… less fun. I gather it pretty much carries on as it is, and that maybe it’s meant to foreshadow their relationship being different to the relationship with Harry, and it’s not really an aspect I’m interested in. Honestly, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of any pairing up in these books — unless it’s Sirius and Lupin. Uh.

Enjoyed the reread, though I’m not sure I enjoyed it to the same extent I used to.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – Poison

Posted July 28, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Poison, Sarah Pinborough

This is a difficult book to decide about, for me. I like the narration, the way it’s written; it’s deceptively simply written, with that fairytale like tone, and yet there’s a lot of rewriting going on. It’s not just the sexual content, but also the ambivalent attitude to the same. There’s casual sex, sex for power, shameful sex… You’d think it would be sex positive, with the powerful figures of Snow White and Lilith, but it really isn’t; sex is a thing that people seem to use to control each other, it’s just taking of power.

I’m not a big fan of all that, though I’m thinking that probably wasn’t what the author wanted a reader to take away from the story. But the ambivalence isn’t just about the portrayal of sex: it’s also about Lilith, the wicked stepmother. She’s young, she used to laugh, and Snow wants to get through to her… but she’s transforming into something wicked. There’s a commentary there on power and powerlessness, too. Sometimes it seems like we’re meant to pity Lilith, to believe she’s doing things wrong but wishing she could get them right. Sometimes she just seems hateful. The line isn’t walked delicately enough to keep both sides in sight.

There’s also all the allusions to other stories — Aladdin, Hansel and Gretel — which felt too obtrusive to be clever, to me.

I’m planning to read Charm, and maybe Beauty as well, and that might help me figure out what to think.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – The Goddess Chronicle

Posted July 27, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Goddess Chronicle, Natsuo Kirino, trans. Rebecca Copeland

This is a really good retelling of the story of Izanagi and Izanami, with a dual thread of story where a young woman’s life echoes that of the goddess as she finally goes to serve her. The translation seems to capture the flavour of the original, a sort of tone that seems to be as distinct to Japanese stories as there is one I find distinct in Russian stories. It’s mostly simplistic language, which maintains that fairytale feel.

I wasn’t a big fan of the narrative voice, though. Sometimes it’s first person, sometimes third, and it’s not always clear where/why the switch has happened. I felt like I didn’t always follow the reasoning behind the characters’ thoughts, particularly not in the last page or so, and Izanami as a personification of all the sorrows of all women didn’t work for me. Like, she’s a “woman among women”, for giving birth and being abandoned by a man. So not to give birth, not to participate in that aspect of femininity, means you’re not properly a woman? You haven’t had real female experiences? Hm.

There are some great moments of tension, grief and understanding, and some beautiful description, but it doesn’t come together right for me. Part of that might be because I’m definitely missing context; my only other contact with the story of Izanagi and Izanami is round the edges in Persona 4, and I’m not sure that even really touches on it much — it’s more from meta about the game than in the game itself. So it’s difficult to really contextualise this retelling and the commentary it makes on the original story, which is always a shame when reading a retelling, for me.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books

Review – One Night in Sixes

Posted July 26, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

One Night in Sixes, Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

I can’t remember who picked this for the SF/F bookclub, but I’m definitely going to be interested to chat about this one and find out whether they’d read it first, or whether they recommended it because they wanted to read it and it sounded interesting. Because it’s not badly written as such, and the world is pretty interesting, but nonetheless I had problems.

For example, I don’t know what’s gotten into publishers putting glossaries and dramatis personae at the back of books — Tor did it with The Goblin Emperor, so I know it’s not just Solaris — but I read this with only half a clue who and what everyone was. The glossary didn’t actually help much after the fact, to be fair, and it wouldn’t have been easy to turn to in an ebook anyway, but perhaps it would’ve helped. The problem is that the book is basically set in an alternate North America (I think?), but it was absent the kind of clues needed to contextualise that.

I’m still not clear on whether this was alternate history or set in the future or what, and I don’t know enough about North American history to pick up on any clues there were for that sort of thing. It plunges straight into the byplay between the characters — which is actually pretty good, especially the tension between Elim and Sil — and doesn’t give much chance to grasp the broader details.

Which, to be fair, I don’t think you entirely need to know, at least not in the first 10% of the book, when you’re busy establishing character. But there were politics here I didn’t understand, words that were either made up or not English which I had to guess at, etc. While the actual writing was easy enough to follow, I just couldn’t connect the background stuff into anything coherent.

And, since I wasn’t fond of the characters for themselves, this actually ended up being just a stream of words which I didn’t really take on board. If people at the bookclub want to talk about plot and character, I’m rather afraid I’ll be stuck.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – The Raven’s Head

Posted July 25, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Raven’s Head, Karen Maitland
Received to review via Netgalley & Bookbridgr

I forgot I’d requested this on Netgalley, and ended up getting it via Bookbridgr as well. Oops! Especially oops considering I wasn’t a big fan of Maitland’s last book, and I was starting to think her recipe was getting a little past its sell-by date. There were ways in which this book was just as predictable for Maitland if you’ve read her other books, but something about the writing/tone kept me going, and I did enjoy it.

It’s full of dastardly characters, of course, and if there’s a sordid torturous thing you can think of, one of the characters has probably done it. Even one of the most innocent characters has a downright chilling moment. But there are things which got my attention and evoked some pathos, too: the friendship of Felix and Regulus, Gisa’s care over Peter, Gaspard’s fear for Vincent.

I think Vincent’s voice was really well done — as long as Maitland was intending him to sound like a sociopath, anyway. The way he manipulated people, only saw his own gain, twisted every situation to be about himself… Well, there are people like that.

Overall, more enjoyable than I found the last couple of Maitland’s books, but the medieval historical fiction with touches of paranormal that might just barely be explained away, plus awful characters doing awful things, and dire secrets, etc, etc… It’s getting a little old.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Karen Maitland, mystery

Review – The Dark Wife

Posted July 24, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Dark Wife, Sarah Diemer
Originally reviewed 19th June, 2011

I don’t exactly remember how I came upon The Dark Wife the first time. I don’t think it was in the usual way — I seem to remember that someone posted a to do list, and they were going to buy this book if they completed it. Something like that. Anyway, I was enchanted by the whole idea: a lesbian retelling of the Rape of Persephone, consensual and with a genderflipped Hades. A reclamation of a horrible story, in both a feminist sense and an LGBT sense. Apparently, it’s based on older versions of the myth, where Persephone chooses to go down into the Underworld.

Sarah Diemer’s blog has several interesting links about it: These Are Not Your Stories impressed me when I found it, in particular. It reminded me of a conversation in reviews here on GR, about how horrible it was for Malinda Lo to ‘steal’ Cinderella and write an LGBT version. I argued then as now: that it’s a powerful thing for LGBT people to take these stories and write ourselves into them, make a place for ourselves. Straight people can look to these stories as a dream of theirs: while fairytales remain exclusively heterosexual, gay people are shut out of ‘happily ever after’ dreams. It’s no use to tell us to go and make up our own, because going to make up our own shuts us out of the tradition that we may well have adored and loved as children, the old familiar stories that we never get tired of.

Sarah Diemer recognises the power of the old familiar stories. She even offers The Dark Wife free, as a PDF, here, for anyone who needs it — which is exactly why I bought her book, personally, because I can afford to and I want her to write more. At fourteen, fifteen, I needed it, and it wasn’t there yet.

I enjoyed the story itself a lot. I read it in about an hour, just a bit more than that, and in one go (aside from when I had to stop a moment to look up concert times — ugh, how dare people interrupt my reading?). I’m a little unsure whether I think it deserves three or four stars: I love the idea, and it was a good read, but I didn’t sink as deeply into it as I’d have liked to. It was, well, fairytale like, which meant I already believed it would turn out okay in the end, and which kept me from really feeling the tension.

I thought it was clever, though, the use of the pomegranate, the parts about the Elysian Fields… And I thought Cerberus was cute.

I was a less wowed by the ‘After’ section, which didn’t quite seem to fit.

Definitely not worth a five star “it was amazing”, but it’s enjoyable, fun to read, and necessary.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, queer fic, Sarah Diemer, SF/F

Review – Sex Criminals: Two Worlds, One Cop

Posted July 23, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Sex Criminals: Two Worlds, One Cop, Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

No, really, what the hell am I reading?

I like that this discusses depression. I like that Suzie and Jon aren’t automatically super happy forever just because they can both stop time with their orgasms. I like that Jon goes to therapy, and the first therapist doesn’t do him much good, and that the one who does begin to help (and it is only beginning) is idiosyncratically suited to him. That’s the way it works. (I’m not as keen on the exhortation to get out there and exercise ’cause that’ll fix it. It’s true for some people. It’s not always true, and it’s not always possible.) I like the portrayal of Jon’s depression where he goes all grey and there’s a bad Jon-voice telling him everything’s terrible, and the meds level him out and take the edge off everything. That, too, rings true.

It’s also cool that the porn star from the first book is fleshed out a bit, and has a whole backstory of her own and a relevance to the plot. Also cool that female sexual health is a key thing, and that it acknowledges that not all women like the same stuff, just as they don’t think or act the same way. Whether they’re porn stars or not.

The plot, though? The timeline is all over the place, Jon is kinda creepy sometimes, and I just do not care about all this sex. And it’s difficult to root for people who’re using secret powers to rob banks, however noble the cause — or at least, it’s difficult to find someone trying to stop them totally evil.

I think there’s two strikes against me and this comic here: one, I don’t have that kind of sense of humour. We’re pretty sure I have one, but you need a microscope. This is not the kind of humour that works for me, nor the kind of weird that I find interesting. And two, I’m ace, and I just do not understand the appeal of all this sex. I don’t know if that’s playing into my lack of shits about this series, but probably.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Matt Fraction