Review – Binti

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor

I keep meaning to read Okorafor’s work, but Who Fears Death was a bad fit when I picked it up, and my copy of Lagoon has gone AWOL. Which left this as my introduction — maybe not a bad thing, because it’s fairly bitesize, without being truncated. I wasn’t sure what to think of it until I was talking with Robert from my book club, though, where he noted that at the start of the book, things begin to happen due to Binti’s merit. She gets herself into university, and she’s brave enough to leave her family and set out into the unknown. After that, though, it’s luck: she couldn’t know that the things she took with her would be useful, had no idea how to make them useful, and basically just happened to survive and do well because of her background.

It feels almost like message fiction: sometimes, someone from an unprivileged background can make good because they bring new tools which other people wouldn’t consider. That’s not a bad message, and the story and world-building is reasonably entertaining… but. The conflict essentially ends by 20% in — after that, Binti no longer has to rely on her own resources. She just happens to have the right things with her.

That’s a bit of a simplification, but it does weaken the story for me. It starts off strongly, and the world is interesting — Binti’s people, the way things are set up, the aliens — but then… I began to feel as if it would turn out okay because Binti was special somehow. Having a special protagonist who is insulated from harm makes suspense and intrigue difficult.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, short stories

Readathon Progress Post

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Good afternoon, everyone! It’s almost time for the readathon, so I thought I’d get my progress post up and running. All my updates will be in here, unless the post starts getting ridiculously long, in which case I might start a new one. Let’s start by showing off my stack (or, you know, some of it).

Of course, who knows whether I’ll stick to that, because I am a contrary creature…

Here’s the introductory meme!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Cardiff, UK. And since I’m Welsh, you can expect some squealing about the rugby as well, I’m afraid.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I don’t know, I’m quite looking forward to rereading Old Man’s War. Or maybe Magic Slays; Ilona Andrews’ work is always fun.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Salted caramel chocolate Cadbury fingers. Mmmm.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m a ghostwriter and will be looking with interest to see if anybody’s reading books I’ve had anything to do with… not that I can tell you if you are.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? I’m pretty in the swing of it, now. I’ll sleep if I have to and read joyously if not, and not beat myself up too much about either outcome.

13.31: Well, I’ve started with Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates. I actually tried to read this before and did not get on with it, so I’m a little surprised to find myself enjoying it.

14.24: Just did the Cover Escape challenge, and now it’s back to curling up with Phryne. Yeesh, it’s cold here in Wales!

15.26: I’m strangely slow at reading, today! I thought I’d easily get Phryne polished off in two hours. Ah well, enjoying it.

16.34: Now finished my first book! Not sure what’s next, being social a little bit first.

17.44: Have started reading Hollow City. Accidentally spoilered myself about the end, oops. About 1/4 of the way through.

18.27: More than halfway through Hollow City now. Break for dinner! Wales lost in the rugby, sigh.

21.02: Whoops, where is the time going? (Cue some Sandy Denny!) Listening to music to liven me up again and taking a break to chat. I’m 1/3 of the way through Murder Past Due, and 3/4 of the way through Hollow City — I was flagging a bit, so I changed it up for a while.

22.07: Finished Hollow City! I think I’m going to see if I can have a bath… books to go in with me: The Moonspinners (Mary Stewart) and Murder Past Due (Miranda James).

01.07: Well, I read The Moonspinners in the bath, completing my third book. But now I feel a bit sick, and I have work and book club tomorrow, so I’m going to get some sleep now. Back in the morning!

09.39: I’m back! I actually ended up reading over half of another book till I could fall asleep, so I’m now halfway through Dark Entries (Robert Aickman).

10.59: Finished Dark Entries. Now I’m going to settle back down with Murder Past Due, and see if I can finish a fifth book this readathon.

12.19: Now I’ve finished Murder Past Due. I’m wrapping up with some organisational stuff rather than reading more.

Tags: readathon

Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 17, 2015 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

This has been an unexpectedly busy week again, since friends have been super nice to me (particularly Lynn and Robert), and Mum ended up with some Amazon vouchers from surveys! Which is really nice, because it is a stressful time. This week my grandmother’s going to have her operation for cancer, so I would really, really appreciate good thoughts sent her way.

Anyway, back to the books!

Won

I liked The Errant Prince a lot, so yay for this! Looking forward to reading it. Thank you, Sasha L. Miller!

Dead tree books

I was instructed to get something light and escapist and easy, and Magic Slays will be exactly that for me. And research, since paranormal romance is a genre I ghostwrite in… Dark Metropolis apparently has a bunch of LGBTQ characters, including an ace character.

Ebooks

A rather random mix, really! A few of these I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

Library

Another mixed bag, really! My Brother Michael and The Grand Sophy are rereads grabbed for the readathon this weekend (post coming soon).

What’s everyone else been getting?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves

Review – Embassytown

Posted October 16, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Embassytown, China Miéville
Originally reviewed 26th October, 2012

Miéville’s work is never easy for me — I always have to work for it — so I get a little contemptuous of people who just read fifty pages and give up, even though I do that plenty with other books. I always have to give Miéville plenty of leeway: he gets to a place where he blows my mind in the end, but it might take half the book before I’m starting to see it.

So it was with Embassytown, and not helped by the fact that I’m in a bit of a depressed phase at the moment and everything is Too Much Effort. But I got there eventually, and when I did, I didn’t want to put the book down for a second. I stayed up to finish it, last night, and felt breathlessly excited at the twists and turns.

I can understand the criticisms that there aren’t really any well-defined/sympathetic/unique characters (maybe if there’d been more of Spanish Dancer?), but in Miéville’s work there’s always plenty that makes up for it, for me. His cities are pretty much characters, both a collection of separate organisms and an organism in themselves, and his world-building is second to very, very few. I loved the concept of Language, and the way it became language. I just. Flail.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, China Miéville, Flashback Friday, SF/F

Review – The Wicked + The Divine: Fandemonium

Posted October 15, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Wicked + The Divine: Fandemonium, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson

I wish I had the first volume here, so I could have flipped through it again and got myself quickly back on board for this one. Not that it took too much to get sucked back into it, but in terms of the mystery, I couldn’t remember who I suspected of doing what and why! The characters stuck in my head, too, at least their roles, but their names didn’t. Partly my fault, because I’m not a visual person at all and I can’t ever connect names to faces, let alone in the second volume of a comic I’ve read once before. It doesn’t help that McKelvie’s style is much the same as it was for Young Avengers — I think, “Hey, that character looks familiar… no, I’m thinking of America Chavez.” Sigh.

The art is, as in the first volume, absolutely gorgeous. I don’t think I could imagine The Wicked + The Divine in any other style — it’s perfect this way. In many ways, this volume complicates the plot more, introducing more characters, more background, more twists. There’s still a lot more to discover, and despite the relative thickness of the book, I wanted more, right away, right now.

Please?

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics

Review – Thornyhold

Posted October 14, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Thornyhold, Mary Stewart

Compared to Stewart’s other romance/mystery stories, this is rather gentle. It’s more about family being there for you, about everyday magic, about finding yourself at last and fitting yourself into the world. The protagonist, Gilly, really hasn’t had a chance to grow up, or at least to grow out of her parents’ expectations, and here she finds space to do exactly that, thanks to the cottage left for her by her godmother.

It honestly sounds at some point like there’s something more sinister going on — and to be honest, the antagonist’s plan is kind of creepy and weird, and there’s animal abuse that really mustn’t be discounted as harmless that I think kind of gets waved away by the ending. And the fact that the antagonist’s plan doesn’t end up working on the intended target, but does work on an unsuspecting and previously uninterested person… hm. That’s kind of not a happy ending, not a reason to relax. If you’re going to have a world where something like a love potion works, and the protagonist is concerned about it up to the point where she meets the man she wants… Hm.

But really, that’s bringing serious issues from fantasy stories into a primarily-romance story, where it’s meant to be unproblematic. So I let it go. (Pause for musical interlude.)

Not my favourite of Mary Stewart’s books (although honestly, I don’t know what I would pick — maybe The Ivy Tree, or Nine Coaches Waiting?) but fun enough when you take it as a gentle romance story with a little tang of mystery and magic.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Mary Stewart, romance

Review – The Witches of Lychford

Posted October 13, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

The Witches of Lychford, Paul Cornell

This novella has an interesting triad of characters at the centre. They’re very different, and yet they have things in common, and things to teach one another. One’s an atheist who fears she’s losing her mind; one a pastor fearing she’s losing her faith; and one a woman who would probably refuse to agree that she was afraid of anything. The personalities make quite an interesting mix!

The story itself is fairly simple, with a traditional sort of feel. A new supermarket is coming to Lychford, and the residents are split almost 50-50 on whether they want it or not. Campaigns are in full swing, both for and against. So far, so ordinary. But Judith knows there’s more to it — that the supermarket as planned will change the shape of the town, and maybe even alter the fabric of the world: Lychford is built the way it is for a particular reason.

Those are just surface details: each character has much more going on, which impacts the plot of the novella in different ways. The three main characters (who all happen to be female) are well-realised and compelling, even when one of them is cantankerous.

I didn’t love it like, say, Robert did, but I did enjoy it. It’s paced well and is just the right length — neither cut off short or stretched out too long. It was the first book I read from Tor.com’s novella line, and it was a good introduction.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 13, 2015 by Nicky in General / 17 Comments

This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is picking authors you would like to see write together. I’ve taken a somewhat random approach, just throwing favourite authors together in some cases. Also, I’ve kept dead authors in the equation, because you never know. If anyone could find a way to talk to a dead author, it’d probably be another living author.

N.K. Jemisin and Kameron Hurley. I can only imagine what evils they would create… it’d be amazing.
Gail Simone and Kelly Sue DeConnick. A sudden thought: imagine Batgirl vs Captain Marvel. Or Captain Marvel vs Red Sonja.
Jo Walton and Steven Brust. I like their work, Jo admires Brust’s books, and I know Brust at least has collaborated before…
Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie. Mind you, it’d end with all the characters dead.
Cherie Priest and Kelley Sue DeConnick. Maybe they could adapt Bloodshot and Hellbent into a comic, using Kelly Sue’s knowledge of how to script?
Jo Walton and Dorothy L. Sayers. Farthing is a pastiche of Golden Age crime fiction. I’d love to see what Wimsey would do in Walton’s alternate Britain… or what Carmichael would do, face to face with Wimsey. I feel like he’d probably get along better with Parker.
J.R.R. Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay. The Fionavar books were influenced by Tolkien, undoubtedly, and Kay worked with Tolkien’s son on preparing The Silmarillion. The two together would surely do some fascinating things with mythology.
Ursula Le Guin and Jo Walton. Because what better way to short out my fannish circuits?
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Because Good Omens was genius.
Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. Might be a bit of a mismatch, but they both deal in fairytales…

This was actually a really hard one to come up with. I’ll be interesting to see what other people have thought up!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – The Fox’s Tower

Posted October 12, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Fox’s Tower, Yoon Ha Lee

This is a lovely collection of microfiction, which often teasingly looks over the edge at poetry in the imagery, the choice of words, the spare precise nature of the prose. It’s a collection of fable-like stories, some of them more familiar than others, all of them given their own little twist. There were a few that didn’t really strike me, but microfiction is a very difficult art, and I think Yoon Ha Lee does an amazing job with the form. Each word has to be necessary — done. Each image has to evoke a picture, an emotion, a perfect still moment — done.

I also liked that gender is not a major thing in these stories. It shifts. Someone is referred to as someone’s son, and yet the pronoun is ‘they’. It’s noticeable at first because people don’t usually do it, but I quickly got used to it, and it’s a part of the narrative voice. (Some characters are ‘she’ or ‘he’; it also depends on the character, the story.)

I know Yoon Ha Lee has a sci-fi book deal with Solaris, and I’m definitely looking forward to that on the strength of this.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, short stories

Review – Hawkeye: L.A. Woman

Posted October 11, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Hawkeye: L.A. Woman, Matt Fraction, Annie Wu, Javier Pulido

This volume of Hawkeye collects a bunch of issues about the younger, cuter Hawkeye, Kate Bishop. What I kinda don’t get is how much like Clint she acts — she’s not the serious, dedicated leader of the Young Avengers here at all (and she doesn’t once that I can think of contact any of her team). The volume is mostly made up of new characters, aside from Kate and the antagonist, Madame Masque.

It’s fun, and the art is okay — I don’t like it as much as Aja’s — but I like Kate Bishop self-assured and telling Noh-Varr he’s a jerk, or helping Billy and Teddy save the world with love. We don’t get to see the Young Avengers off-duty like this much, which I guess is the format of these Hawkeye comics, but… I don’t know. And I half-expected her to come out with lines from Fraction’s Sex Criminals series: “This fucking guy”, etc.

She does still kick ass, but she also gets her ass kicked a lot, and often due to naivety and inexperience. Which is great, but, uh, the Young Avengers have taken down some pretty big threats, actually. Girl knows what she’s doing — and she has a support network other than Clint and her dad. A phone call to Billy or Teddy would’ve gone down well, Tommy could have been at her side in literally seconds, and America Chavez would gleefully have stomped Madame Masque’s faces. David could probably have set her up with a database, never mind files, if she’s gonna be a PI. Like, with Clint you can get him not asking for backup, because he’s a dummy. Kate isn’t. I’d at least have liked to see her think about calling her team, especially when she believes people are dying.

I don’t know, I guess one superhero being a dummy is kind of funny. Two is apparently overkill for me. Did like the gay couple who help her, though.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel, Matt Fraction