poisonenvy's reviews
845 reviews

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What can I say? I really love these Wayfarer books, which are cozy and poignant and all found-family-y. 

A Closed and Common Orbit follows an AI named Sindra, a human named Pepper, both of whom are introduced in the previous book, and the family they have made. It's really good, very touching: I nearly started crying mid-work and it was only by the greatest strength of will that I avoided sobbing in public in the middle of my shift (but like, not a devestrating cry. A touched, warm crying).  

Chambers makes very good use of character voice to differentiate the characters too. Overall, an extremely enjoyable experience and I am sad I need to wait for a few weeks before I can start the next. 

Homosexuality In Renaissance England by Alan Bray

informative

3.5

Homosexuality in Renaissance England is a somewhat dry, very academic look at... Well, homosexuality in Renaissance England. The title is pretty much what you get (though the last chapter -- out of four -- is about the early 18th century and the birth of Molly houses).

Examining trial records and literature from the time, Bray argues that there wasn't some secret, gay-tolerant society hidden under the laws that would hang a man if he was found engaging in homosexual acts like some people claim. It wasn't something that people just quietly did while winking and nudging one another, everyone in on this funny joke that ostensibly gave the death penalty to gay men while secretly allowing them to continue. But he does claim that homosexuality was, nevertheless, something that existed and eventually found a network of communities in the 18th century that resisted the persecution and vitriol that was leveled at it. 

Like I said, it's fairly dry, but it's short (I finished it, cover-to-cover) in a single evening and it's very interesting. 

The Terror by Dan Simmons

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

There are times when this book was very clearly written by a Straight White Man, but I am happy I can say that the explicit descriptions of naked teenage girls stops pretty early in the book (though that doesn't stop young adult women from going around shirtless nearly every time we see them, even in -50 weather) so you can instead enjoy all the descriptions of botulism, cannibalism (though strangely not as described as I would have expected) and general gore instead.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book, which I listened to on Audio (Tom Sellwood is an *excellent* narrator, by the way). Throughout the novel there were some elements I wasn't stoked on (the expedition ended horrifically enough historically that having some possibly supernatural ice monster picking them off one by one felt like overkill), but by the end of the novel I felt like everything had come together quite nicely and even the elements I hadn't been sure of fit in quite nicely. I enjoy slow paced novels for the most part, and so I felt like the slow pace really helped with the creeping sense of dread and hopelessness. It did not end at all how I had expected it too. 

Someday, hopefully, I'll be able to watch the TV show too. 🤞

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Ghost Bird is a biologist who prefers the company of nature to people, and doesn't make friends very easily. Which means that a job exploring a strange wildness with a group of women who are also only known by their job titles is right up her alley. 

This book has a theme that a lot of the books I've read recently share, and now that I recognize it I'm pretty annoyed by it.  But other than that I enjoyed this a lot. The biologist is an extremely unreliable narrator, and all the things she doesn't write are just as, if not more, important than the things she does write, which makes this an extremely fun read. The prose is interesting. Some scenes were downright cinematic.  Overall, I enjoyed this one a lot. 

The Beggar's Opera and Polly by John Gay

adventurous funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I will confess, after Captain Singleton I was skeptical about the other books in my Pirate Literature class. 

But this was actually great? It was scathing and high-key hilarious, excellent political commentary and satire.  I enjoyed both The Beggar's Opera and Polly, through I think I preferred Polly overall. 

It took a minute to get into it and to understand the operas sense of humour, but once I did I very much enjoyed it. 

The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

There are many things that I recognize are a product of the fact that this book was written in 1720, before the form of the novel really became popular.  Things like the inconsistency of the tense, which switches from present tense to past tense without rhyme or reason, or the fact that I have rarely read a book that was paced so inconsistently (in the first seven pages of the book, our protagonist has been kidnapped, and then taken on by someone else, and then press ganged, and then taken by Portuguese sailors and then marooned on Madagascar, and then then next 130 pages are spent with the driest overland journey across Africa that I have ever read in my life).  I can also recognize that for a book written in 1720, this book probably could have been <i>more</i> racists, but that doesn't change the the fact that it was still extremely racist.  

I can recognize that a lot of this is because it was written in 1720.  That doesn't mean that that knowledge made this book at all more enjoyable. 

(Though I will say I appreciated how extremely gay the end of this narrative is. But alas, even that couldn't save it.)

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Shelley

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I have read Frankenstein before, but that a long time ago, and I have certainly never read the 1818 version of the book (which was the first published; Shelley rewrote and added to the book twice, and the version which is most often read was the last version, published sometime in the 1830s). 

Its been way too long since I read that final version to say for sure that I prefer this version, the first one that she wrote and published. I can't say for sure that I feel like the other version has been bloated a little by additions. But this one is streamlined and very clean, and was an excellent one-day read which I enjoyed very much. 

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

The prose is engaging and spectacularly engaging.  Very uncanny, and the slow reveal was well done. Definitely one of those novels that has you considering specific topics (in this case religious control and humanity in comparison with animals). 

I don't know that I've ever really heard of The Island of Dr Moreau before, and I certainly didn't know what to expect when I started reading it, but it's pretty easy to see that it's influenced a lot of body horror that's come after it. 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

While I finished read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde earlier this month, I have read it again for Paper Writing Purposes, and this time read my Penguin Clothbound Classic version instead of listening to it on audiobook. 

Once again, I very much enjoyed the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and am once again wishing that I could have read it without the cultural knowledge of the mystery of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's relationship. 

This edition also contained the short stories The Body Snatchers (which I read last year as part of my Classic Tales of Horror anthology), Olalla (which was new to me), a section of an essay Stevenson wrote about his dreams, and Robert Mighall's essay Diagnosing Dr Jekyll. 

The Body Snatchers was based on current events of his time, and was quite entertaining. Olalla is a Gothic tale that lightly criticises the aristocracy, and was also very enjoyable. Stevenson's dream essay I guess was fine but didn't engage me overmuch, and Mighall's essay was both interesting and informative. 

Overall a very short anthology of Stevenson, but a solid one which I enjoyed quite a bit. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

adventurous emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Whelp, I loved this. I loved this a lot. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet follows a mix-species crew of Space Tunnellers (people who make it so that people can travel quickly from one end of the universe to the other), as they make their long way to a new contract, making a tunnel to a planet that has been largely isolationist until now. 

The found family vibes are strong, and the crew is really fantastic. Getting to follow them through their troubles and their triumphs, and watching them learn how to navigate through the different definitions of family and figure out different cultures amongst each other. 

I am not often a fan of episodic narratives and this narrative really is pretty episodic -- we get snapshots of their life aboard ship as they make their long journey -- but honestly it worked for this story really well, and I was extremely glad for each little snapshot that we got. 

The audiobook took a little bit to get used to -- the narrator is a little stuff, adds inflection in places that felt awkward, and has some random pauses in the middle of sentences that I couldn't understand, but by the end of the book I was very used to her and it didn't bother me much at all.  

I cannot wait to finish the rest of this series!