Tag: books

Review – Ironskin

Posted December 29, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Ironskin by Tina ConnollyIronskin, Tina Connolly

I wasn’t sure about Ironskin at all when I initially picked it up. I’d seen the comparisons to Beauty and the Beast, and I knew it was based somewhat on Jane Eyre. I don’t generally like stories based on classic novels, and Jane Eyre is one of my favourites, but as I got into this, I rather liked it. It doesn’t follow the novel too closely, doesn’t break its own logic to fit the novel’s plotline; it makes and sustains a world of its own. There are parallels, more than similarities, if that distinction makes sense.

I enjoyed the first half of Ironskin quite a lot; I know other people found it slow, but I enjoyed that. The romance is, of course, quite closely parallel with Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, so I can’t really fault it for the brevity of that aspect. It isn’t quite as compelling as the original, though.

Towards the last third or so of the book, it gained a lot of momentum and became a much more important (in the sense of far reaching consequences for the world) story. And… I didn’t like that so much. Sometimes you get sick of people saving the world — I wanted the story of Jane saving herself, Dorie and Edward, not the world. I wanted it to end on a more personal note.

The strength Jane finds isn’t a bad thing, but the story just didn’t take a direction I was interested in. The high drama of the last third after the post-war calm at the beginning didn’t work. I was prepared for an introspective story about recovery, from the beginning, and it became a story about war.

It’s a very interesting idea, and I enjoyed the fey lore and the set up. I don’t know if I’ll read more books in this series — my heart sank rather when it diverted almost completely from Jane Eyre. We’ll see!

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted December 29, 2013 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

It’s time for Tynga’s Reviews’ Stacking the Shelves meme again! I’ve already posted about the books I got for Christmas here, so I won’t repeat them — and there’s far too many to do so anyway! But here’s some I picked up today (with my first ever paycheck, hee).

Cover of Secret Chambers by Martin BrasierCover of Wonder Woman volume 1, BloodCover of Ultimate comics' Hawkeye

On another note, you know those noble plans about the books I was gonna read for the WWE challenge? Well, I’ve realised there’s one more book I’ve read that I meant to count for the challenge, Martha Wells’ City of Bones, and I ended up starting reading another which wasn’t on my little list, Tina Connolly’s Ironskin.

Stick around, you’ll come to expect this kind of fickle behaviour from me when it comes to books…

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Review – I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Posted December 28, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan BradleyI Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Alan Bradley

At this point, I’ve elected not to take these books seriously at all, and just enjoy them for what they are without picking nits. After all, at least it features a curious, resourceful young girl who is interested in chemistry and forensics, who solves murders in a delightfully Blyton-esque way by getting herself all tangled up in them. Of course there’re problems with this… fetishisation of an old British country house and ~British spirit~*, etc, Flavia tampering with crime scenes, the nigh-on abusive behaviour of Flavia’s sisters (although that does seem to be developing, slowly, book by book, and might perhaps become more understandable later on).

No, nitpicking aside, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is fun. How very like Flavia to try and prove the existence of Father Christmas by attempting to more or less glue him to the chimney pots. And there’s a touch more about her Aunt Felicity, and Dogger, which makes both of them more interesting characters. Well, I already found Dogger interesting, but I wasn’t sure what the point of Aunt Felicity was. Now… I think she and Flavia have more in common than we’ve yet seen.

The mystery itself is fairly perfunctory — the murder isn’t discovered until pretty much half-way through! I barely had time to get my head around the suspects before Flavia was getting attacked. It’s really less of a mystery series and more of a quirky detective series, mysteries to some extent optional.

Still, as I say, it’s fun — when I don’t take it seriously.

*British my foot. The De Luces of this series are very, very English, and that’s what Alan Bradley meant them to be. British is unnecessarily inclusive of the Welsh, Scots and Irish. There’s not a trace of any of those nationalities here.

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Worlds Without End Challenge

Posted December 27, 2013 by Nicky in General / 1 Comment

This year, Worlds Without End ran a challenge about getting people to read female genre authors who were new to them. Now, I figured I already read plenty of female authors, but there’s always room for new ones, right? I even decided to go one better: I’d read double the amount suggested in the challenge. And I’ve been pretty successful so far — these are my completed reviews for the books I’ve read, available on Goodreads. Likes on Goodreads are super helpful, by the way: I’ve given up linking to the GR version of each review, as the links never registered any clicks, but it would really help me in getting ARCs and so on!

Oh, and there was one other rule — you had to pick a random new female author. So I had to pick two.

Anyway, here’s the list:

Now, the observant will have noticed that I am not quite there yet, and I haven’t got a lot of time. So, here’s the list of books I hope to get read in order to complete the challenge, by New Year’s Eve.

  • Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
  • Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Djinni
  • Melissa Scott, Shadow Man
  • Joanna Russ, The Female Man
  • Rosie Best, Skulk
  • Julianna Scott, The Holders

Wish me luck…

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Review – Silver on the Tree

Posted December 27, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Silver on the Tree, by Susan CooperSilver on the Tree, Susan Cooper

Silver on the Tree combines all the best of the other books of the sequence: the magic, the genuine moments of terror and alarm, the weaving of legends and the everyday, the mysteries that leave you to wonder, the sense of place… And more than any of the others it combines both sadness and joy; in that, it’s the most adult of the sequence.

I especially enjoy little touches like Bran getting to meet Owain Glyndŵr; one thing I did miss was Barney not having more of a reaction to actually meeting King Arthur who he’s idolised since before the first page of the first book. I can’t remember having noticed it before, but that jarred me, this time. Also, I remember someone mentioning to me how much it bothered them that this book plays into the betrayal of a woman theme (as does The Dark is Rising, in the form of Maggie Barnes, “a sweet face” to lure people into the Dark). Thinking about it this time, I see their point, even though the White Rider is otherwise ambiguously gendered. It’s as if women can somehow hide their allegiance to the Dark behind womanly charms, where the men are immediately picked out (Mr Mitothin doesn’t fool Will for a moment; Maggie Barnes, however, has to act wickedly to get him to realise, and “Blodwen Rowlands” fools John entirely until the very end).

We do have some great female characters in these books — the Lady and Jane, mainly, with Will’s sisters, mother and aunt and other such minor characters — but it’s a bit nasty that the alluring side of the Dark is pretty unambiguously female.

Still, that’s not enough to ruin the books, and nor is it suggested as something all women could/would do. It’s just something that may bother you, particularly if you forget how old these books are.

I think I’ve ended my reviews of this book with this quotation before, but it’s still true. The book ends with a call to arms to all of us, to stop relying on anyone else to change the world and know that we are, alone, responsible for our own choices.

“For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you.”

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What are you reading… Thursday?

Posted December 26, 2013 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Whoops! Yesterday being Christmas Day, it didn’t “feel” like a Wednesday… Though I doubt anyone missed it.

What did you recently finish reading?
He Said, Sidhe Said by Tanya Huff, which I’ve reviewed already. Before that, I’ve been working on my reread of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising; I’m up to The Grey King.

What are you currently reading?
Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper is the first book open on my ereader. The second one is I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley; I’ll probably finish both of those tonight.

What do you think you’ll read next?
Well, I’m still working on the epic unfinished list. I think either my next ones will be the rest of the Flavia de Luce books, including the ARC I have of The Dead in their Vaulted Arches, or I might take a break from Flavia and work on some of the books that aren’t in a series. Christopher Morley’s The Haunted Bookshop, maybe, or Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Djinni. I’m not sure yet. All my new Christmas books are very, very tempting… *snatches hands away from one of the genetics ones*

Books acquired:
Many, many and varied. See this post

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Review – He Said, Sidhe Said

Posted December 26, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Cover of He Said, Sidhe Said, by Tanya HuffHe Said, Sidhe Said, by Tanya Huff

As usual, Tanya Huff’s stories collected in this ebook are fun; it’s a solid mix of fun and a more serious story. The title story (a sort of retelling of Tam Lin) was probably my least favourite. Since it’s a shortish collection (seven stories), I’ll review each story separately, albeit briefly.

‘A Choice of Endings’: I didn’t remember the character of Mrs. Ruth very well — I read Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light quite a while ago — but I enjoyed the story nonetheless. It’s always interesting when older women are the heroines of a story, you really don’t see it enough, and it was good to get into Mrs. Ruth’s head. And her antics are quite entertaining: she’s deadly with bottles of Tabasco sauce…

‘Finding Marcus’: One of Tanya Huff’s few first person stories, apparently, and narrated from the point of view of a dog — and she’s a cat person. I think she got the essential traits of a dog pretty well: that literally dogged loyalty and persistence which I think is one of the most lovely traits of a good dog. (I’m biased. My nan’s dog, in my childhood, was very dogged and loyal, and heaved his arthritis, tubby body up a step and along the hall to check on me while I curled up on my own in the front room, reading.) The story was pretty simple, but it worked well, even for being something Tanya Huff doesn’t do much.

‘He Said, Sidhe Said’: As I said, my least favourite of the collection. I just didn’t find it very remarkable. The various parallels to Tam Lin are clever, but it wasn’t absorbing for me.

‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’: I have a fairly ‘meh’ reaction to this one, too, for all that its seasonal. Or perhaps because it’s seasonal? I’m not good with seasonal. There’s only one Christmas-themed album I like, in music (Thea Gilmore’s Strange Communion), so maybe I’m the same about stories. It just didn’t grab me, anyway.

‘Tuesday Evenings, Six Thirty to Seven’: I liked this one. Again an older female heroine, and a very non-conventional Brownie troop. I thought that was kind of clever, and I enjoyed the Brown Owl’s attempts to adapt to them and to do her best by them. It was filled with a kind of tenderness toward the whole Brownie movement, too, which I can understand — I never was a Brownie, but I so wanted to be.

‘Under Summons’: I haven’t read Summon the Keeper yet, though I have it, but this story made perfect sense even without it. Loved the pissy cat and the helpful fish. It makes me want to hurry up and read the original series.

‘Word of Honour’: I’m not sure about the quality of the history detail around the events in this story, and the portrayal of the Templars, etc (my knowledge about Templars, such as it is, comes mostly from Assassin’s Creed). I didn’t find the story as emotional as Tanya Huff mentions she does in her introduction, but it is an enjoyable story and there are a couple of moments in it that did really get to me.

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What I got and what I gave

Posted December 25, 2013 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Books for Christmas! To my mind, easily the best gift, and one I enjoy choosing for people. It’s always interesting to see what people choose for me, too. So here’s a list of the books I gave people — and the books I got, just because it’s fun.

What I gave:

Girlfriend:
-Marvel, Planet Hulk, The Death of Spider-man, Spider-man: Who is Miles Morales?,  Spider-man: Scorpion. (Because Marvel.)

Sister:
-Malinda Lo, Adaptation and Inheritance. (She liked Ash and Huntress, but likes sci-fi more, plus LGBT author.)
-Kelley Armstrong, The Summoning. (She likes urban fantasy, and I enjoyed this one.)
-Dawn Cook, First Truth and The Decoy Princess. (She’s a fan of Kim Harrison, Dawn Cook’s other pen-name.)
-Kate Mosse, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales. (We both rather like Kate Mosse.)
-Nicola Griffith, Hild. (LGBT author plus awesome epic medieval women.)
-Veronica Roth, Allegiant. (She asked.)

Mum:
-Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. (Loves all things space with a passion.)
-Reza Aslan, Zealot. (Was interested in this after my review.)
-James L. Watson, Double Helix. (We were talking about this a couple of days ago and she expressed interest, plus I want to read it too.)

Lozzi (oldest friend):
–A Guinea Pig Nativity. (Guinea pigs!)
-E.M. Bard, Test Your Cat: The Cat IQ Test. (I have a feeling her cats are not going to score very highly.)

Amy (ex-housemate, university friend):
-Jo Walton, Among Others. (Because I love this book and if you read it, you get to know me a lot better.)
-Blake Charlton, Spellbound. (I bought her the first book. Plus, dyslexic hero!)
-Garth Nix, A Confusion of Princes. (Garth Nix is a tradition with us.)

Lois (ex-housemate, university friend):
-Sharon Penman, Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning. (She asked, plus it’s Welsh history.)
–Jo Walton, Among Others. (See above.)

Ruth (ex-housemate, university friend):
-Jo Walton, Among Others. (See above.)
-A lot of other books, since I joined with other friends to get her an ereader!

Rachel (ex-housemate, university friend):
-Marvel, Young Avengers vol. 2. (I bought her volume one for her birthday, and Billy and Teddy are the most adorable. Also, LGBT, hero of colour, kickbutt ladies.)

You might have spotted that I feel especially responsible for nurturing my sister’s taste in books. The more she reads, the happier I am. I especially love it when I manage to pick out something she likes (I was the one who introduced her to Kim Harrison, a couple of Christmases ago!).

Oddly, nothing for Dad this year, book-wise. He got a light-up phaser and two Blake’s 7 boxsets, instead. (Everyone else got other stuff, not just books, I swear.)

What I got:

From my sister:
-Tim Spector, Identically Different. (Genetics!)
-Ursula Le Guin, Walking in Cornwall. (Ursula Le Guin poetry!)
-Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. (Genetics! Again!)
-Marvel, Avengers vs. X-Men. (Heeee.)

From my parents:
-Marvel, Captain America: Two Americas, Captain America: Road to Reborn, Captain America: Reborn, Steve Rogers: Super Soldier, Captain America: No Escape, Captain America: Prisoner of War, Captain America: The Trial of Captain America, and Captain Marvel: Down. (Uh. I like Captain America?)

From my partner:
-Marvel, Ultimate X-Men vols. 1-4. (I liked their appearances in Ultimate Spider-man.)

From LibraryThing Secret Santa (majkia):
-Chris Wooding, Retribution Falls.
-Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God.

Plus, with Amazon vouchers/money from Pete Thomas, my partner and my parents:
-Andy Clarke, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. (My mini-comic, reboot, might have given you all a clue about my interest in this.)
-Ann Aguire, Grimspace. (My sister got it in paperback, and I got interested too.)
-Faith Hunter, Skinwalker. (Again, Squirt got it. Plus, it sounds a little like SPN with more ladies.)
-Tina Connolly, Ironskin. (A steampunk Jane Eyre? Sign me up.)
-Alastair Moffat, The British: A Genetic Journey. (Genetics! Plus I think I’ve read other books by Alastair Moffat.)
-Sophie Robbins, A Hole in the World. (An adventure romp type of thing with a princess getting rescued from trolls by a girl called Bianca…)
-Tanya Huff, He Said Sidhe Said, The Silvered, Valour’s Choice and The Better Part of Valour. (Because Tanya Huff writes such fun stuff; I’m partway through He Said Sidhe Said already.)
-Susan Cooper, Ghost Hawk. (Susan. Cooper.)
-James L. Watson, Double Helix. (Sound familiar?)

…And I even got some presents that weren’t books, like my new fingerless gloves!

Photo of my hand with my new hippo fingerless gloves on.

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Review – The Grey King

Posted December 24, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Grey King, by Susan CooperThe Grey King, Susan Cooper

Normally, The Grey King would be my favourite of the five books that make up this sequence. Something about the setting in Wales, and Bran’s loneliness and arrogance, and of course the tie-in with Arthuriana, and the way that it begins to bring in some more moral ambiguity when John Rowlands questions the coldness at the heart of the Light. Somehow, I didn’t love it as much as usual this time — possibly because I’d just spent a lot of time debating the merits of Greenwitch with various people, and thus missed some of the stellar things about that book (more involvement of female characters, more mysteries like the various hauntings of Cornwall, contact with the Wild Magic) when reading this one, which is more straightforward in some ways. If you’ve read the series before, then there’s little mystery about who Bran is and what role he has to play.

Still, it’s a lovely book, with Susan Cooper’s usual understanding of people and lyrical way of describing things so that the sound of the words is an important part of the experience for me. The relationship between Owen and Bran, with that lovely section so near the end; the levels you can see, particularly depicting Owen and in the character of John; the touches of mystery there are like the issue of the Grey King himself — all of it is as wonderful as ever on what must be at least my tenth reread, and probably more than that.

And, of course, there’s Cafall — the courage and loyalty, and the heartbreak. That whole section brings a horrid lump to my throat every single time.

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Review – Greenwitch

Posted December 23, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 5 Comments

Greenwitch by Susan CooperGreenwitch, Susan Cooper

Greenwitch isn’t really my favourite book of the series, though it is the one with the most mystery — I wonder a lot about the background mythology, the legends of Cornwall that the Greenwitch brings to life and what lies behind each glimpse of part of a story. It occurred to me last night while reading that maybe Susan Cooper has come closer than Tolkien to a “mythology for England”. Granted, he’s closer if you’re looking at England as “the land under the rule of the Anglo-Saxons”, but Cooper has touched on the legends of the land, the real stories that matter, rather than inventing a quest and a ring. Her quests come organically out of the mythology she’s using, and the places where she joins on her own are pretty seamless.

(Tolkien has created a world of his own, I think, and people often put too much emphasis on the “mythology for England” stuff. I don’t mean to do that: whether or not he meant to achieve that, what he achieved in the end was great. I just think the idea of a mythology for England is maybe actually achieved by Cooper.)

Greenwitch also features one of the things I love most about this series — the characters. They’re people. Simon and Barney are good-hearted boys who get jealous and possessive when another boy of a similar age seems to encroach on their time and their friends. Captain Toms, an Old One of the Light, gets laid low by gout. And I liked that the Dark is personified in a single character, this one time — not as the tide of the Dark, but as a single man of the Dark. We see hints of individuality there; his bitterness when he says “I have no friends”, his genuine artistic talent. It’s another of those moments where I think the black/white Dark/Light dichotomy cracks a little.

There are also some gorgeous passages in this book about the beauty and danger of the sea, the amoral and uncaring world of the Wild magic (and then, again, that hint of the Greenwitch as a child, as a lonely creation in need of something to hold on to, of kindness).

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