Tag: book reviews

Review – The Riddle of the Labyrinth

Posted April 1, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Riddle of the Labyrinth, Margalit Fox

This book discusses the decipherment of the Minoan script, Linear B. I didn’t know much about it before I started reading this; I’ve read pretty often about Champollion’s work on hieroglyphs, though not in the detail given here, and it’s the kind of thing that always fascinated me as a kid. So I was intrigued by this right away, especially because it promised to bring the work of a more obscure female scholar into the foreground. Fox definitely wants to highlight the work of Alice Kober, who she seems to hold in great affection, but there is quite a lot of space dedicated to the discoverer of Linear B, Arthur Evans, and the man who ultimately deciphered it, Michael Ventris.

It’s a thorough explanation of the decipherment, so perhaps not for the faint of heart, and it never pretends that the contents of the tablets were expected to be (or found to be) particularly glamorous: it was obvious from the start that the tablets would prove to contain inventories, not great literature. The glamour is in the mystery, which for a long time was completely locked: the language wasn’t known, the script wasn’t known, and the contents weren’t known. It was very hard to get a grip on how to extract meaning. Arthur Evans never did; he seems to have locked onto what he thought the answers would be, and gone looking for evidence. Ventris did the same, initially. Kober, of the three, was the one who really began on the right track: she studied all sorts of languages to understand how languages in general work, and she did painstaking work on the statistics, until the facts began to emerge for themselves.

The book also includes the life stories of the three scholars, particularly Kober and Ventris. It was fascinating to read about Kober and her determination, and her career in academia in the 40s; the hopes and setbacks she experienced. I can understand Fox’s fascination with her. It sounds like she was a great teacher and a passionate person, for all that you can peg her for the dried-up-spinster stereotype.

Some of the technical details of the decipherment were a bit beyond me — statistics and anything to do with numbers just don’t stick in my head — but I enjoyed this anyway. It’s a thorough account, which shines some light on a deserving person (Kober) whose contribution has been neglected.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – Madam, Will You Talk?

Posted March 31, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Madam, Will You Talk?, Mary Stewart

Not my favourite of Mary Stewart’s novels, but it’s what the library had when I felt like revisiting. It probably hasn’t really been long enough since I first read them, but ah well: they’re still fun. Stewart was brilliant at establishing a sense of mood and place: a hot French town, dust on the roads, shade under the trees, a cool breeze when you drive fast but sticky and heavy when you’re stuck in traffic… I enjoy Charity’s character, her past, and the fact that despite that tragic past, she uses what her husband taught her about life and love to move on, and Stewart never implies that her love for either the new love or the old diminishes the other.

The relationship itself, well. The constant descriptions of the love interest as dictatorial are exactly right, and one can’t help but think the whole relationship a little off-putting. She’s terrified of him at first, she thinks he’s a murderer, and he’s violent to her, and yet… There’s a passion in the relationship, which is something I do like to see, but his violence was waved away all too easily. A different era, I know… and yet.

The mystery itself, well: it’s melodramatic, all kidnapping and attempted murder and links to Nazism. But it works as long as you’re in the right headspace, and I was, since I’m well used to Stewart’s work.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Mary Stewart, mystery, romance

Review – The Explorer

Posted March 30, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Explorer, James Smythe

I’ve been vaguely meaning to read something by Smythe for a while. This doesn’t really encourage me: the idea is interesting enough, but my interest waned from the very first chapter, because the narration is so flat and lacking in affect. I couldn’t care less about Cormac (or indeed, the rest of the crew), and the science was inconsistent enough that it didn’t capture my attention as a novel of ideas, either. (I mean, be clear: are you or are you not breaking Newton’s laws of the conservation of motion? If yes, why?)

It seemed… just rather too similar to various other books and sci-fi films that are around, without giving me anything that made it stand out. Which is a disappointment given that this book has been vaguely on my radar for a while, but not too surprising when I look at the reviews on Goodreads and such. Ah, well.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – Daredevil vol. 1

Posted March 29, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Daredevil volume 1, Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, Marcos Martin

I don’t really know much about Daredevil, beyond the fact that his real name is Matt Murdock, and that he’s blind. This comic makes a reasonable introduction, though it’s a bit obvious that it is an introduction — there’s a lot of ‘as you know, Bob’ type exposition about how Matt can see, his limitations and his background. Apparently this takes a turn out of a gritty trend for Matt, which it sort of flags up in the story by Matt going on about how he has to do this to cope. It feels a bit clumsy, in that sense.

Some of the art is really great, though: the way they represent Daredevil’s senses, the way they bring across the insouciance of the character, etc. The plot itself seemed similar to She-Hulk’s, in a way: they’re both lawyers, both now trying to integrate their superhero identities with that and having problems. It wasn’t a bad plot, but it didn’t feel particularly new and fresh and startling; it definitely felt like just a primer on Daredevil and what he can do. State of the Daredevil.

Okay, and I did read it in one go, but not enough to make me love the character (unlike, for example, Kelly Sue’s Captain Marvel or the new elements introduced to the team in Gillon’s Young Avengers, which were also Marvel Now titles).

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel

Review – Season of Storms

Posted March 28, 2015 by in Reviews / 4 Comments

Season of Storms, Susanna Kearsley

There’s so much about reading Susanna Kearsley that reminds me of reading Mary Stewart’s work. Something about the sense of place (this is so firmly Italy, and the house and its grounds are so easy to imagine), the female heroine, the romance… Except it’s better, because it steers away from some of the colonial and sexist attitudes that were still pretty firmly entrenched in Mary Stewart’s work, despite her independent and reasonably proactive heroines.

And this book especially won me over, because the main character has been brought up by two gay men in a stable, loving relationship. Neither of them are stereotyped, and the relationship feels real, lived in, between both them and the woman who is essentially their daughter. I got more caught up by Roo and Bryan than by Celia and Alex, honestly. I also ended up having a conversation on Twitter with the author about which of various characters I’d want to be my dad… (Well, in reality, no one is better than my dad. But shush.) There’s some serious emotional punches there, which really work because of that warmth and family which Kearsley portrays so well.

The plot itself is reasonably predictable; the trick is that I got involved with the characters.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, romance, Susanna Kearsley

Review – Cybele's Secret

Posted March 27, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cybele’s Secret, Juliet Marillier
Review from 27th January, 2011

To my surprise, I actually enjoyed Cybele’s Secret more than Wildwood Dancing. The main problem I had with Wildwood Dancing was the predictability, and maybe the tortuous way everything went wrong, and so the pacing… For the most part, Cybele’s Secret was better, in that respect. I didn’t figure out the whole plot in the first fifty pages as I did with Wildwood Dancing, so it didn’t drag so much for me — and when it got to the last part, I was hooked, toes curling with excitement, grinning like an idiot: the lot.

My main criticism of Cybele’s Secret is how very, very similar Paula’s tone was to Jena’s. The two sisters are alike, but… Not so alike, I’d thought. I might have been reading the same narrator, though, or so it seemed to me… And the separation of Paula and her father, the way she got on the ship… Once she was on the ship, she acted in character, but there was nothing level-headed about going to confront a man she believed to be violent, unscrupulous and cruel. I didn’t believe that as something she would do. Which is unfortunate, because part of the plot hinged on that.

I predicted who would be following them, too, and even how she would end, so it still didn’t keep me on my toes — but the feeling of utter familiarity wasn’t there.

It’s hard to say, after that, what I did like so much. Duarte and Stoyan, mainly. I believed in both their characters, and in their different loves for Paula. And I believed in her affection for them. The end made me smile a lot.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, Juliet Marillier, SF/F

Review – Station Eleven

Posted March 26, 2015 by in Reviews / 13 Comments

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

I originally received this to review, but have actually bought a copy in the meantime because I took too long about getting to it — and some of my friends were very enthusiastic about it.

I’m actually finding this one a difficult one to review, anyway. The prose is great, and the interweaving of the plots, the character arcs, and the way the different time periods are handled… all of that worked very well for me. The set-up of the world, too: the plague, the way people survive, the existence of something like the Travelling Symphony (though it did remind me of Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique). It just… doesn’t seem to be sticking with me. I finished it last night and I’m already forgetting details and connections.

Maybe part of it is that I didn’t really form an emotional connection to anyone. The way it shifts between central characters caused that, somewhat: I was never sure who was coming back, who was incidental. And sometimes the characters were just… drifting through their lives without purpose. The actor, for example, his hopping between wives and his callousness to his friends; he’s a well-written character, and yet not one I can be passionate about.

I think maybe what it really lacked for me was a sense of destination. “Survival” is all the characters aim for, and there’s no one unifying thing that they’re all drawn toward, so that their coming together feels unimportant. I don’t usually need some big epic event as a book’s climax, but it didn’t seem like this had a climax — it was more a character study, a world study, which normally I would enjoy, but because I didn’t really connect with any of the characters, it didn’t elevate the novel beyond “well, objectively I can see it’s well-written”.

I hesitate over giving it a rating, because I normally rate by enjoyment, but also by a sense of ‘okay, I’ll take a star off for x and y’. I don’t want to dock it stars, though, and yet it doesn’t merit the highest accolades I’ve given to books like The Goblin Emperor. I’m going to have to go with three stars (‘liked it’) — which is not to say it’s not a good book, maybe even a five star book in some ways, but it just can’t touch the involvement I’ve had with books I’ve given five stars.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – Yesterday's Kin

Posted March 25, 2015 by in Reviews / 3 Comments

Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress
Received to review via Netgalley

This novella has two complementary storylines, really: each relies on the other to give it more meaning and to create tension, although each could be a satisfying story on its own. One thread of the story isn’t SF at all, as such: it’s about family and belonging, knowing who you are and knowing who your family are. The other thread is fairly typical SF: an alien civilisation contact Earth saying that they are very close to humans, genetically, and that a disease that devastated them is coming toward Earth. So then there’s a scramble to find a cure or a vaccine, with plenty of secrets and inequalities in the relationships, etc, etc.

Where the two come together is in the customs of the aliens, which emphasise family, and one of the scientists from the humans, who has besides her interests in genetics a somewhat dysfunctional family. I’m not going to spoil the various twists in the story which weave the two threads together, because I found it fairly predictable even without hints!

My main feeling is one that I’ve had before with Kress’ writing: I didn’t really feel the emotions deeply. It seemed like I should, but there was something distant about the characters. I could relate to them fine, but I almost didn’t believe their emotional moments, their turmoil. It was quite weird, intellectually recognising each reaction and knowing it was appropriate for the situation, and yet somehow not feeling as if it was real for the character.

Overall, I liked the ideas and the way the two threads work together, and though I’d begun to expect the twist, I did enjoy the way it happened. I just didn’t feel much for the story.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Nancy Kress, SF/F

Review – Myth and Magic

Posted March 24, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Myth and Magic, ed. Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman
Received to review via Netgalley

Normally I quite enjoy queer retellings of fairytales — I’ve written a couple, because it’s just fun to take such a familiar story and wring the heteronormativity out of it. I’ve enjoyed stories like Malinda Lo’s Ash greatly. But most of these took the same sort of tone, flippant and trivial — which is fine, but not what I’m interested in right now. There are some fun ideas, some humorous bits, but there’s also some aspects that make me wince: the idea that only one sort of boy (a gay one) would wear a felt scarf to dinner. Whaaaat? Stereotypes, really? Gah.

It wouldn’t be so bad if those stereotypes weren’t still harmful. In so many ways, it’s ridiculous to look at someone and say, “Oh, you look gay.” Or whatever. It’s not funny yet because it’s still so harmful.

Shrug. Mostly left me cold, though some of the stories were better than others.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, queer fic

Review – Elizabeth is Missing

Posted March 23, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey

Elizabeth is Missing is a very interesting play on the unreliable narrator. Maud isn’t unreliable because she’s lying or because she has anything to hide – or not exactly. She’s unreliable because she can’t hold onto her memories or make coherent sense of the things around her. It might sound a bit like a weird mystery novel: you could imagine it like that, with Maud being really sane but being gaslighted by the people around her into believing she’s crazy, and that’s why none of them will listen to her when she talks about Elizabeth. But it’s more mundane than that, at least for one strand of the plot.

The real mystery is in Maud’s memories of her sister, Sukey, who went missing. There’s a great sense of time and place here, putting it so firmly in post-WWII Britain in the same way as those youthful memories are the most vivid for elderly people. There’s a lot of really great description, too, which is partly facilitated by the fact that Maud doesn’t remember things right. You can make the most mundane things fresh and new if they’re a surprise to the narrator; you can tilt the world slightly off-balance like that. Healey does pretty well with that, and with the narration; to me, she balances a lot of things very well.

For example, it’d be easy to show the impatient daughter who just won’t listen to her senile mother. But it’s not like that in real life for most people; it’s just that people are impatient, and will say a sharp thing or roll their eyes or utter something sotto voce just to help themselves cope with what’s going on. And we see Helen like that; we see her trying to be patient, trying to understand, and sometimes coming up short. If there’s a carer in the world, especially a family member, who doesn’t feel like that, well, get them sainted.

It’d also be easy to really mess up the narration, over-exaggerating the things Maud forgets, making her memory come and go too conveniently for the story, smoothing over the edges of the illness to give us a tidy ending. Healey doesn’t fall to that temptation, either.

I can see why you might find it tedious, too painful to read, too disjointed; I liked the slow unfurling of the mysteries, even when I expected the endings, and I laud Healey for writing an elderly heroine with patience and understanding.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, mystery