Scan barcode
ergative's reviews
925 reviews
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
3.0
This was very nice and fluffy. Nothing terrible happens, all the potential antagonists turn out to be pretty decent people, and the rapid acceptance of our main character into a new life is comforting to read about, but you need to be willing to look past the unbelievable bits. Not the talking non-binary plants, centaurs, antlered winged men, goat boys, and ghost bears, I hasten to add--those were lovely bits of world-building--but the societal behaviours that depend on certain recognized patterns working in all the ways that make them good, and none of the ways that make them bad. In particular, I refer to the tendency for small-town insular societies to close ranks and look after their own. The reason for this (as I believe) is that they know exactly who their own are. They keep strict distinctions between insiders and outsiders. So it rings a bit false that a stranger to this small island would be able to benefit so quickly from the closing of ranks that such a society would give to one of its own. (But then, as I like to say about sexism, if you can imagine dragons, why can't you imagine a society without sexism?)
The effortlessly magical and chymerical properties of the beings in is this world are a lovely touch, but that led a bit to its own awkwardness. At one point the intelligence of merhorses to be described to a character in terms of dolphins, as if the character needed the 'unfamiliar magical' creature aligned with mundane animals. The reader does, of course, but I don't see why a character who has grown up on an island whose economy rather depends on using domesticated merhorses to herd fish would need to have their features explained by comparison to fully wild animals who do not even show up in the book outside this comparison. That exposition was clumsy.
Still: small quibbles, in an otherwise fluffy blanket of a book. This is a very solid installment in the cosy SF genre, and if you need something cosy and undemanding, this book will provide it.
The effortlessly magical and chymerical properties of the beings in is this world are a lovely touch, but that led a bit to its own awkwardness. At one point the intelligence of merhorses to be described to a character in terms of dolphins, as if the character needed the 'unfamiliar magical' creature aligned with mundane animals. The reader does, of course, but I don't see why a character who has grown up on an island whose economy rather depends on using domesticated merhorses to herd fish would need to have their features explained by comparison to fully wild animals who do not even show up in the book outside this comparison. That exposition was clumsy.
Still: small quibbles, in an otherwise fluffy blanket of a book. This is a very solid installment in the cosy SF genre, and if you need something cosy and undemanding, this book will provide it.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Meh. Lots to say about this, but most primarily is that the way the Foundation people mindless keep the faith with the Seldon plan that they lack the fundamental knowledge to understand is obviously a religion of its own. They even say things like, 'For Seldon's sake!' So the way Asimov juxtaposes Seldon's goofy-ass 'psychohistory' as science against the religious foils of the other planets on the Periphery makes me wonder if he's doing something very clever, or for some reason is not able to see the irony surrounding his entire premise. And, to be honest, I really fear it's the latter.
Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray
3.75
I found myself getting a bit restless at some of the plot threads. In particular the disintigration of Theta and Evie's careers was a bit tough to take. To be sure, I knew that Evie's radio show was never going to last, but I got rather annoyed at how often Theta could have just gotten rid of her abusive ex Roy (for the avoidance of doubt: by burning him alive) and instead decided to be the better person and let him go free to make trouble for her later. Like, once, sure, but the second time she had him at her mercy she really should have just let him burn.
And the 'breaking up with you to protect you' nonsense is so tiresome. Really, now that characters are pairing off right and left the YA-characteristics of the book are a bit much.
But there are so many characters that there are other great things happening too! Bill Johnson has been a sleeper all along, very skillfully kept in the story's back pocket until he's needed. Ling and Henry's friendship is so sweet. And Mabel's arc is quite well done. It's very poignanthow proud she feels of making a real difference, using only her mundane powers with her mundane group of radicals; only for their greatest effort to be laid at the feet of diviners by the world at large.
This book is the first in the series that doesn't have its own internal story-arc. Everything is building towards the main series-arc. And that's fine. It's time for the big story to take over. I'm having a great time. It's a great series.
And the 'breaking up with you to protect you' nonsense is so tiresome. Really, now that characters are pairing off right and left the YA-characteristics of the book are a bit much.
But there are so many characters that there are other great things happening too! Bill Johnson has been a sleeper all along, very skillfully kept in the story's back pocket until he's needed. Ling and Henry's friendship is so sweet. And Mabel's arc is quite well done. It's very poignant
This book is the first in the series that doesn't have its own internal story-arc. Everything is building towards the main series-arc. And that's fine. It's time for the big story to take over. I'm having a great time. It's a great series.
Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
This book needed about 75% less handwringing at how sexist Victorian scientific circles were, and about 200% more bringing dead things back to life. Maybe the second half gets there, but I was so irritated at all the helpless indignation that I noped out. I don't disagree with the statement, but I wanted to read a story rather than a screed.
Great cover art, though.
Great cover art, though.
The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger
2.25
Goodness, what a slog. I see from the author's website that she is a 'futurist' and 'game designer', and it definitely feels like she was more interested in the mechanics of cybernetic computer brain chips in her invented world than in plot. Actually, the plot was fine. The world-building was pretty well developed. I was just so bored the whole way through.
War Among Ladies by Simon Thomas, Eleanor Scott
3.0
To be honest, I feel like the dedication is the best part of this book:
`TO THE MAN IN THE TRAIN
between Newton Abbott and Exeter, who declared to the Author that all teachers had:
Too much pay
Too little work, and
Too much leisure,
this book, respectfully and without permission, is
DEDICATED'
Not because the rest of the book is bad, but because the dedication is so good. The rest of the book is about a failing girls' school in 1928 England, and the trials facing the teachers, whose lives are circumscribed by some pretty rough working conditions. The fixed salary scale for teachers means that if a senior teacher is fired or laid off, she cannot find a new job, since potential employers are going to hire newer, cheaper teachers instead; and if she is fired or laid off before her pension vests, then she loses decades of 10% salary contributions to the pot. Combine those pressures with a school exams system that may shut down an entire school if the students fail; an incompetent French mistress whose students cannot pass their French exams; and a marking scheme that says any student who fails French cannot pass the exam at all, regardless of her scores in all the other subjects, and you have a perfet storm of scorn and resentment among all the teachers whose careers, pensions, and lives are at risk.
I find that the internal tensions, scheming, and intrigue described in this book are just as exciting as court drama in any work of high fantasy. It's not so much the stakes and setting that I like about political drama as all the machinations and alliances and factions; and you can get those in just about any setting. So those bits were great.
The problem is that this book was clearly not given much editing. There are internal inconsistencies, plot events which are not set up properly, and other plot events which seem to have vastly more substantial importance than they are given. For example, at one point a teacher has a mental breakdown from the strain of all the pressures surrounding the future of the school. This is designed to catalyze some of the teachers into more concerted action, but it would be more effective if, for example, the specific circumstances of the breaking-down teacher had been set up earlier--or indeed if her character had been included in the earlier events of the book at all. As it was, I didn't recognize her name, and her specific pathetic circumstances that rendered her situation so pitiable were related in the same exposition dump as the description of her break-down.
In another event, two teachers arrange to go away for a weekend biking trip, which--when the weekend comes--has somehow turned into a walking trip. This minor inconsistency turns out to be have been motivated by a need for transportation to arise, requirng one of the teachers to be rescued by a love interest. The rescue wouldn't have worked if she'd had a bike. But surely it would have been a simple enough matter to flip back to the previous chapter where she's planning the trip and replace 'biking' with 'hiking'? Evidently not.
Oh, and speaking of the love interest: in a moment of vulnerability and openness he reveals himself to be an anarchist escaped from prison and hiding from the authorities under an assumed name. Goodness gracious me, how juicy! In a world where a teacher getting a ride home from a man is a source of SCANDAL, what on earth will come of such a secret?!!?
Well, nothing, actually. We never hear about it again.
See what I mean? Some editing was needed here.
`TO THE MAN IN THE TRAIN
between Newton Abbott and Exeter, who declared to the Author that all teachers had:
Too much pay
Too little work, and
Too much leisure,
this book, respectfully and without permission, is
DEDICATED'
Not because the rest of the book is bad, but because the dedication is so good. The rest of the book is about a failing girls' school in 1928 England, and the trials facing the teachers, whose lives are circumscribed by some pretty rough working conditions. The fixed salary scale for teachers means that if a senior teacher is fired or laid off, she cannot find a new job, since potential employers are going to hire newer, cheaper teachers instead; and if she is fired or laid off before her pension vests, then she loses decades of 10% salary contributions to the pot. Combine those pressures with a school exams system that may shut down an entire school if the students fail; an incompetent French mistress whose students cannot pass their French exams; and a marking scheme that says any student who fails French cannot pass the exam at all, regardless of her scores in all the other subjects, and you have a perfet storm of scorn and resentment among all the teachers whose careers, pensions, and lives are at risk.
I find that the internal tensions, scheming, and intrigue described in this book are just as exciting as court drama in any work of high fantasy. It's not so much the stakes and setting that I like about political drama as all the machinations and alliances and factions; and you can get those in just about any setting. So those bits were great.
The problem is that this book was clearly not given much editing. There are internal inconsistencies, plot events which are not set up properly, and other plot events which seem to have vastly more substantial importance than they are given. For example, at one point a teacher has a mental breakdown from the strain of all the pressures surrounding the future of the school. This is designed to catalyze some of the teachers into more concerted action, but it would be more effective if, for example, the specific circumstances of the breaking-down teacher had been set up earlier--or indeed if her character had been included in the earlier events of the book at all. As it was, I didn't recognize her name, and her specific pathetic circumstances that rendered her situation so pitiable were related in the same exposition dump as the description of her break-down.
In another event, two teachers arrange to go away for a weekend biking trip, which--when the weekend comes--has somehow turned into a walking trip. This minor inconsistency turns out to be have been motivated by a need for transportation to arise, requirng one of the teachers to be rescued by a love interest. The rescue wouldn't have worked if she'd had a bike. But surely it would have been a simple enough matter to flip back to the previous chapter where she's planning the trip and replace 'biking' with 'hiking'? Evidently not.
Oh, and speaking of the love interest: in a moment of vulnerability and openness he reveals himself to be an anarchist escaped from prison and hiding from the authorities under an assumed name. Goodness gracious me, how juicy! In a world where a teacher getting a ride home from a man is a source of SCANDAL, what on earth will come of such a secret?!!?
Well, nothing, actually. We never hear about it again.
See what I mean? Some editing was needed here.
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
3.0
Mmph. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. But I found myself putting it down and struggling to pick it up again. I thought the city and setting were very well realized, but Touraine seemed much too uncertain of herself to really be a satisfying main character. She keeps changing her mind and undermining the various factions that she throws her lot in with, over and over again, and gets far too many second and third chances than she deserves, given the damage that her repeated dumb decisions wreak eveerywhere. It definitely feels like a first novel: terrific idea, but the execution needed to be tightened up. Probably the second book in the series will be better, but I don't see myself picking it up.
Fabulous cover art.
Fabulous cover art.
The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond
2.0
This never really came together right. Dani's the daughter of an art thief who uses her magic to make copies of paintings that are utterly convincing. She used to work with her mother's team of magical art thieves until an FBI agent persuaded her to betray her mother, Maria. Maria went to prison and Dani has been kicking around and feeling guilty ever since. Now Maria's former partner Archer approaches her and asks her to do one last heist, so she must get the team back together and steal a painting. It's a great set-up. I was all in.
The problem was the execution of pretty much everything. There's an incredibly boring love triangle involving Elliot, a member of the magical art thieving team, and Brad, the owner of the target painting. Apparently Gwenda Bond thinks that getting all huffy and jealous is an attractive feature in potential love interests, because Brad sure does a lot of it, even though he's also a 'nice guy', which, geez.
Maria herself operates according to utterly unfathomable motivations. She is very pro-heist, fully devoted to making this happen, so I simply do not understand why she does the things she does to interfere with it. At one point she gets Dani fired from her cover-job as head of security at the heist location, and it's presented as a training exercise: you were doing too well, dear; we must make the job harder. Um, wut? Why? Maria is fully invested in making this heist happen for Reasons, as we learn at the end of the book. So; why would she do anything to endanger it?
There's another plot element involving a secret diary, which Maria hides where Dani can find it. Leaving aside how Maria got this diary in the first place, which seems to require some extremely helpful historical lost-child-finding from people that I don't believe would be inclined to reunite lost child with dead mother's diary, this diary is responsible for giving Dani qualms about the job. So why does Maria leave it where Dani can find it? It's presented as an intentional clue that Maria left for Dani, not an accidental discovery. But the diary is pretty damning with respect to Archer's history and motivations, so if Maria had any sense she'd want to keep it far, far away from Dani--especially since Dani has already proven herself not fully reliable (y'know, with the whole betraying-mom-to-the-FBI thing).
Then there's the actual heist itself. Heist novels need to have a crystal clear plan, so that when the plan falls apart and the underplan is revealed, the reader has a satisfying sense of wheels within wheels. The problem is that the secrets of the underplan and the workings of the primary plan were sort of scrambled up with each other, so I was never entirely clear what was supposed to be happening, and whether complications were expected or unexpected. And Brad ends up being SURPRISINGLY SUPPORTIVE of the whole heist job, in ways that really seemed like they were included for plot-convenience rather than any actual thought-out reasons.
So, in sum: good set-up, but the execution was pretty scrappy and ad-hoc.
The problem was the execution of pretty much everything. There's an incredibly boring love triangle involving Elliot, a member of the magical art thieving team, and Brad, the owner of the target painting. Apparently Gwenda Bond thinks that getting all huffy and jealous is an attractive feature in potential love interests, because Brad sure does a lot of it, even though he's also a 'nice guy', which, geez.
Maria herself operates according to utterly unfathomable motivations. She is very pro-heist, fully devoted to making this happen, so I simply do not understand why she does the things she does to interfere with it. At one point she gets Dani fired from her cover-job as head of security at the heist location, and it's presented as a training exercise: you were doing too well, dear; we must make the job harder. Um, wut? Why? Maria is fully invested in making this heist happen for Reasons, as we learn at the end of the book. So; why would she do anything to endanger it?
There's another plot element involving a secret diary, which Maria hides where Dani can find it. Leaving aside how Maria got this diary in the first place, which seems to require some extremely helpful historical lost-child-finding from people that I don't believe would be inclined to reunite lost child with dead mother's diary, this diary is responsible for giving Dani qualms about the job. So why does Maria leave it where Dani can find it? It's presented as an intentional clue that Maria left for Dani, not an accidental discovery. But the diary is pretty damning with respect to Archer's history and motivations, so if Maria had any sense she'd want to keep it far, far away from Dani--especially since Dani has already proven herself not fully reliable (y'know, with the whole betraying-mom-to-the-FBI thing).
Then there's the actual heist itself. Heist novels need to have a crystal clear plan, so that when the plan falls apart and the underplan is revealed, the reader has a satisfying sense of wheels within wheels. The problem is that the secrets of the underplan and the workings of the primary plan were sort of scrambled up with each other, so I was never entirely clear what was supposed to be happening, and whether complications were expected or unexpected. And Brad ends up being SURPRISINGLY SUPPORTIVE of the whole heist job, in ways that really seemed like they were included for plot-convenience rather than any actual thought-out reasons.
So, in sum: good set-up, but the execution was pretty scrappy and ad-hoc.
Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray
4.25
I'm really enjoying this series quite a bit. The thots are plickening nicely,and it's clear the author has a good sense of the long game, balancing the development of book-sized and series-sized story arcs. I'd kind of guessed about Louis pretty early on, but even though I'd guessed most of Wai-Mae's story, the full scope of the reveal was still very effective. The Jericho/Sam/Evie love triangle is quite dull, but all the other characters are so strong individually (except Jericho), and the ensemble cast is so rich, that individual weaknesses are easily compensated for by all the other strengths. And the vibes are impeccable.
Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds by Mohamed A.F. Noor
3.75
This was pitched a bit lower than I would have liked, but there were some excellent tidbits about evolution on earth (e..g, African and European populations evolved lactose tolerance independently through different gene mutations; some bonkers stuff about hybrid matings between fish); and I found the full-hearted love and appreciation for the Star Trek episodes that anchored each subsection very congenial.