rotheche's reviews
37 reviews

The Drowning House by Cherie Priest

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.5

 First up, I'm a huge fan of Cherie Priest's books; I like her range, going from southern gothic like The Toll to fun murder mysteries like Grave Reservations and, no matter where she's writing on that spectrum, she's great at drawing characters and building mood. 

The Drowning House gets going with a bang in the first chapter, then settles down to a steady pace in the first half to two thirds of the book. It's structured similarly to IT, switching back and forth between Leo and Melissa in the present and them plus Simon as children and adults through the years. The flashback sections show the genesis and growth of the space between Leo and Melissa; the present sections show the results of them. This felt like the least successful aspect of the novel to me, which was a surprise; Priest is usually bang on when it comes to writing characters and interactions. But, while the age gap in the past felt real, the development of a sorta-kinda love triangle didn't work for me — the idea that the primary driver of the gap between Leo and Melissa was both of them competing for Simon's love didn't feel as real as the age difference in childhood and then just growing apart. Simon and Marrowstone Island was the connection between them. Leo and Melissa having separate crushes on Simon felt real...but the idea of them hanging onto them and still arguing about it thirty years later felt a lot less so. 

Balanced against the relationship between Leo and Melissa was the relationship between Mrs Culpepper and...sorry, here be spoilers: 

...her sister, Alcesta. While Leo and Melissa's relationship is mostly running on goodwill with a few spiky moments, the relationship betweens Mrs Culpepper and Alcesta is downright aggressive. But again, this felt oddly sketched in; we dont' even find out about Alcesta's existence until two thirds of the way through the book, and we get very little detail about where the dislike came from or how it played out.

The plot of the story is solid; we get information through both the present-day and flashback sections about the mysterious house that washes up on the shore in a massive storm. As Leo and Melissa search for information in the present, the flashback sections fill in more information about Mrs Culpepper and get our clues that there's more to her than meets the eye, even if the kids are surprisingly uncurious about her abilities. I get that kids can be accepting of some weird shit — but Simon and Melissa at least are older and, come on, if your grandmother/friend's grandmother comes out with facepaint and a horn in response to a near drowning, aren't you going to ask some questions? But, okay, aside from that, the story is mostly solid and there's a steady uncovering of information to find out the origin of the house, and what needs to happen to destroy it, and why it needs to be destroyed. 

The story finishes with an epilogue, detailing Mrs Culpepper's original attempt to destroy the house. This felt unnecessary to me; we'd gotten all the ideas in it given in the story albeit in recollection rather than as it was happening. To me, it felt more like Priest wrote the section as a flashback, it didn't fit in the story as it developed, so it survived as the epilogue. Didn't quite work for me. 

Overall, enjoyable but with a few less successful aspects. 

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

 I remarked soon after starting Reaper Man that there's a lot of similarity between the conversational style of a bunch of wizards from the Unseen University and Them (Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian) in Good Omens. That amuses me because, although I haven't hit the Wizards books yet, they do seem to have a fair bit in common with a bunch of excitable kids. But also it's a pointer to how distinctive Terry Pratchett's writing voice is. There is not another author you could mistake him for. 

I have the feeling that Reaper Man is going to end up as one of my favourite books out of the many, many Discworld novels. There's a logical progression in Death's arc — in Mort, when he hired an apprentice, Death stepped out for a little bit to try out human pastimes. Reaper Man takes it step further: he's pushed out by the Auditors of Reality who feel that he's developing a bit too much personality and a bit too much attachment to the souls he harvests, given a timer of his own, and given the boot from being a personification. He's still pretty skeletal, and most people (more on 'most' in a minute) still don't see him as what he truly is...but he's not living in his timeless realm any more. Just him and Binky the horse. 

He ends up in a small village, probably not that dissimilar to the one that produced Mort, bearing the name of Bill Door and working for Miss Flitworth for sixpence a week and his keep. Good value for Miss Flitworth, he's handy with a scythe. While there he encounters one of the few people who see him for what he is; a small child who sees him as a 'skelington' (but it's okay because he's not a dead one). One of the reasons the faceless forces pushed Death out was that he was beginning to identify with his charges; unwittingly, the little girl pushes that even further. Another mark of the change in Death is visible in the shift from his attitude to Mort and Ysabelle's future children (he claims to not have the right sort of knees to be a grandfather) but here he patiently listens to the child's flow of conversation...and in the end, when her life is at risk, he goes to great lengths to help. If the faceless forces didn't like him before, they certainly will have even stronger views about him now. 

Meanwhile, with Death out of the job and nobody else taking up the mantle, things are going awry. People are coming to the end of their lives...but Death isn't collecting them. Ancient Windle Poons, wizard, finds that he's dead but still running around and, once he gets the hang of consciously managing his body, he finds he's actually in better shape now than he had been in a long time while still alive. And Windle isn't the only one affected; there's suddenly an excess of life force in Ankh Morpork (elsewhere too, but Ankh Morpork is a busy place) and something is seeding itself in the city, in a process involving snow globes, shopping trolleys and, eventually, a shopping mall of sorts. 

Death's relationships formed while working as Bill Door are particularly touching, especially his gestures towards the little girl and to Miss Flitworth. Pratchett conveys Miss Flitworth's last night and her soul's final disposition in a beautifully understated fashion; it's emotional but written very delicately, letting the reader experience everything without clubbing them over the head to induce emotion. It's a lovely piece of writing, and an act of trust from the writer to the reader. 

Windle and Death both learn to actually, truly live in their separate stories. Windle is, obviously, the more human of the two but Death's readjustment to living as a human is the more profound. He discovers having company, being a friend, the pleasures of small things. When he confronts the new Death, formed from humanity's overall beliefs, he is righteous, rightly, about New Death's crown and dramatic self-presentation; that is not how it should be done. There's no room for self-aggrandizement, there's only the harvest, done with care and respect. I really do think Reaper Man will end up being one of the top books in the Discworld series for me. 

Midnight at the Houdini by Delilah S. Dawson

adventurous emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes

3.0

 If you know The Tempest, you'll recognise the plot pretty clearly, because it's a slightly rearranged, gender-flipped version of that, with a little Alice in Wonderland added in to freshen up proceedings. 

Taking an old tale and retelling it is a long tradition — hell, even Shakespeare borrowed an idea or two in his day, so it's no bad thing. If you know the originating story, it might take away a bit of the charm for you, but everyone knew how the story of the Titanic ended and the movie still did okay. You'll be able to pick out the characters: Phoebe is Prospero, Daniel (Anna's father) is the King of Naples, Anna herself is Ferdinand, Max is Miranda and so on. The white rabbit belongs entirely to Alice. 

This was a fairly quick read; it's light and fluffy and fun as Anna negotiates her way around the mysterious Houdini hotel. She's the type of person who always needs to know what the rules are for any situation so she won't be embarfassed, and will always look like she belongs. Preparation is this girl's middle name. So for her to be dropped into the middle of an almost Faerie hotel would have to be unsettling. She goes through the usual stages of not believing what's going on, and resisting the situation but, ultimately, she has to deal with the Houdini on its own terms. As we all havae to deal with life on its own terms. 

In addition to the magic, there's romance as Anna and Max meet up and get to know each other. 

I'd have liked a little more in the way of explanation of a couple of threads — the magician who shows young Anna a magic trick, the automaton who draws Anna's picture for Max long before she arrives at the hotel. They seem there only as teaser elements and they're not really tied up well enough for me. 

Mort by Terry Pratchett

funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

 

Mort is the fourth book published in Terry Pratchett's beloved, iconic Discworld series and it's often said that it's the book where he really shifted from loving parodies of fantasy novels to fantasy novels. Still funny — but it's a big shift in goal, to go from gently, lovingly poking fun at something to doing it yourself. 

Trying to get a grip on where to start reading Discworld can be dizzying. There are, after all, 50-odd books including aduult fiction, YA, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, The Science of Discworld etc. Because it's where Pratchett moved from parody, Mort is often recommended as a starting point — it's early in the chronological series as well as being first of the Death novels, so it's a natural starting point. It's also a very quick, lively read. 

There's a tonal shift through it. At the start, when we're first meeting Mort, he does have a parodic sort of feel, Pratchett taking the mickey out of the Chosen One sort of trope. Mort's nobody's idea of heroic; he's raised on a backwoods farm with family who view him as a bit odd, his legs seem all knees and so on. His family can't work out what to do with him and nobody wants him as an apprentice, so they take him to the local job fair, where Death arrives to hire Mort as his apprentice. 

Around that point, the parodic aspect drops away completely and we start getting real story. And it's a nice lean fast-moving one too. Mort meets the boss's daughter, Ysabelle (she's adopted, she's been living in Death's home for more than 30 years without getting any older since time doesn't really pass there), gets a little on-the-job training and is sent out on his own to do The Duty. Predictably, just when he's starting to think that maybe he's getting the hang of it, Things Go Horribly Wrong. 

Meanwhile, Death has taken the chance to step out for a little bit, to explore those things that humans seem to enjoy so much (and to pat some cats. Death likes cats). 

The Discworld has a huge population and, throughout all those books, we meet most of them, but Mort only has a small cast: Death, Mort, Ysabelle, Alfred, Princess Keli and Cutwell the wizard are the main characters (plus Binky, Death's noble horse, who likes a good sugar lump now and then). Mort and Ysabelle change the most, with Mort gaining some...unexpected new skills in his new role, but only when he's not thinking about how to do them, and Ysabelle growing up a bit and realising that, whatever plays and books and tragedies say, maybe not everyone who falls in love needs to poison themselves at some stage. The shift from things being about getting a laugh to being about telling a story with some laughs in is gradual, and welcome. There's more than enough story in there to keep the reader going. 

The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

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

4.5

 The Terraformers was just a delight to read. I love the scale of it: it starts with Destry, moves thousands of years later to her mentee Misha and Sulfur, one of the citizens of Spider City, then finished up thousands of years later with Sulfur and Misha's child. It's epic, even allowing for the fact that so many centuries into the future, people can live hundreds, even thousands, of years. The span of time allows for vast change in the landscape — both geographic and political — which allows the three parts of the book to tackle different but related issues in its three parts, called Settlers, Public Works and Gentrifiers. 

The overarching question I take away from it is about personhood: who is a person? What makes a person? One of the central tenets of the book is the Great Bargain — not dissimilar to David Brin's idea of Uplift, where humanity decides to bestow 'intelligence' on other Terran lifeforms including cats, naked mole rats, and moose, you name it. I've put 'intelligence' in quote marks because it turns out that not all lifeforms are equally treated. Whistle, for example, is Destry's partner - a moose, rated as a Mount as far as intelligence goes. Because he was created as a Mount, he has a limiter in his brain that means he can only talk in one-syllable words (unless they're part of a proper noun). He can think all the complex thoughts he wants, all the long words he wants...but he can only speak in one-syllable words and because he can only speak in words of one syllable, he's deemed to be less intelligent. One of the most heartbreaking moments, for me, was when Whistle was injured and one of his last words before going into surgery was a multisyllabic name — a proper noun, so he could say it. His partner Destry, who is human, misunderstands: she thinks Whistle is talking about myths and stories (the name belongs to a character from a mythologised history of rebellion and uprising). She thinks he likes the story — but he's saying it as rebellion against the limiters that stop him from talking like that all the time. 

It's not just animals, either: bots are people, there are hybrids between organic and robotic — and there are different strains of hominins as well. In fact, that's one of the plot points at the start, when Destry and other rangers discover a secretive colony of Archaeans (basically Neatherthal-ish, but modified to live in an Archaean-era atmosphere and begin the process of terraforming the planet. They were supposed to have died out, but there they are. And I mentioned that the third part of the book has Sulfur and Misha's child at its heart...Misha is H. Sapiens, Sulfur is Archaean, so both hominin. You naturally expect Scrubjay to be hominin as well, but...no. 

Oh, and everyone — person, Mount, Blessed, everyone — is owned by the corporation and can legally be murdered if they make too much trouble. Only it's not really murder, it's just the company disposing of assets. 

So, big question number one in Terraformers: who is a person, what makes a person a person instead of an animal? If a cow can be a person, what about unaltered cows? Are they people, even just in potential? 

Question number two: how are we governed, or how do we govern ourselves? The Terraformers is a very sharp critique of capitalism. Vast chunks of the planet are owned by one corporation as theme parks, holiday destinations, for H.Sapiens. The corporation has pretty firm ideas on who those cities are for — it's not for the people who are non H.Sapiens (though they are perfectly welcome to serve H.Sapiens of course). 

Good luck finding a home to rent, though. 

Number three theme is less a question than a celebration of the effectiveness of self-created family and collective action, and it's those aspect that really bring the optimism and warmth to The Terraformers. There is conflict — but ultimately it is collective action and thinking long-term and widely that save the day. 

So. Epic scale, consideration of some massive questions...but still Newitz has written a novel full of warmth and love and optimism. I've had this one in Mount To-Be-Read since it came out; I wish I'd gotten to it sooner. 

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi

adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

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

4.0

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's a fast read with lots of action. The present-day story happenes over a very short span of time, but it's spaced out by flashbacks — every heist needs its cast of characters, so the flashbacks explain where everyone comes from, in pretty entertaining fashion. Pay attention to the dates in the chapter headings, they'll help keep you anchored. 

At the beginning of the novel, Shigidi is an underpaid, unappreciated cog in the Orisha Spirit Company, fulfilling prayer requests made by the (ever-diminishing) faithful in return for scraps of pray-pay, the belief that keeps him alive. Nneoma is a free agent who runs into him on one of those missions and convinces him that chucking in the corporate gig and coming with her is a better option. Through that lens, it's a pretty good critique of capitalism because, even though Nneoma and Shigidi are outside the corporate world, they're still trapped by it; they're still caught up in the Orisha spirit company's internal machinations, dodging border controls and so on. Every freelancer likely knows the feeling — you're outside the system's demands, but also have none of its safeguards. 

As well as a solid poke at capitalism, Talabi takes some pretty good shots at colonialism: a Yoruba entity can't simply pop into the British Museum and take back a Yoruba artefact, even though it was his in the first place. Nope, they're guarded by the Royal British Spirit Bureau, and some pretty big mythological bruisers — the British Museum does not give things back. Between the two, there's a lot in this book about power: who has it, how they got it, what they'll do to keep it, and how they treat the people with less of it. 

At its heart, though, it's a love story. Both Shigidi and Nneoma have issues: Shigidi's original form wwas one designed to induce nightmares in his victims so he feels both unloved and unloveable, and Nneoma still feels the loss of her sister after centuries, which leads to the situation where Shigidi loves Nneoma but she is unwilling to admit that the reverse is true (again, an imbalance in power). What finally pushes that towards a resolution is tied up in the whole heist. 

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

 

Dr Tingle's tinglers aren't my bag (they have a whole legion of fans, though, and if you reckon you might be interested, give them a go — he has a bunch of anthologies that could make good starting points) but I do love his mainstream horror novels. Straight and Camp Damascus show an author who's always trying something new and developing, which is great. He could have ridden the tinglers from now until the heat death of the universe — like I say, they have legions of fans, and there's no shortage of material in the world for Dr Tingle to keep drawing on. But I'm so glad he made the leap into horror. 

The title Bury Your Gays refers to the trope — if you'd like to be buried under the pile of examples, search for 'tv tropes bury your gays' and kiss the rest of your days goodbye. It's explicit in the novel: Misha is a successful screenwriter, who is "LA out, not Montana out". His series, Travellers (think a modern-day homage to the X Files if both agents were women. In the novel, it's homage to a Files-ish series in Misha's youth, where both agents were men), is coming up to the climactic season finale in which his two FBI agents will finally give in to the UST (unresolved sexual tension, and this really is taking me back to X Files days in the early days of the internet) and kiss. 

The suits are not happy. Misha's given an ultimatum: he can keep them gay and kill them, or he can make them straight and let them live. The third option is he can do neither — and the suits will take him off the show and make the decision for him. 

As Misha tries to decide what to do, things take a sudden turn to the weird: supernatural characters from his earlier films and from the Travellers series start showing up. There's The Smoker, a cursed characters who only wants a light and, if you don't give him one when he asks, he'll give you five days to worry and then debone you; there's the Lamb, a demon in cute baby sheep's clothing; Mrs Why, who just wants a chat. They're all pretty good villains — but they're not the real villain of the piece. 

And not only are they all threatening Misha, they're also threatening his boyfriend Zeke and his best friend Tara. 

Bury Your Gays is a critique not just of how pop culture treats queer characters (hint: Tara, who is ace, is especially important here), but of how it appropriates any discussion about the subject. When Misha gets his moment to declare that gay joy is important and that it should be seen, you'd think it's the cathartic moment — that it'll fix everything. Nope: pop culture will chew that up too. The algorithm eats everything, has a little burp sometimes and then keeps on moving and making money. 

While the plotting is important, it's the characters that shine through for me. Misha, Tara and Zeke, the people from Misha's past that we meet in flashbacks, they all feel very real. It's pacy, with a structure designed to keep you moving through the novel at a solid clip. 

Mean Streak: a moral vacuum & a multi-billion dollar government shakedown by Rick Morton

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

Mean Streak is an in-depth examination of Australia's Robodebt scandal, an act of bastardry by the then-Australian government that targeted some of the country's most vulnerable by telling them they 'owed' the government hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars because they had cheated on their unemployment benefits.

In many - or most - cases, either the debts never existed, or they were vastly smaller than claimed. That the debts were raised at all happened because of an automated system that took annual income data from the Australian Taxation Office and averaged it over 12 months. The problem with this is, unemployment benefit is paid fortnightly, and that's how any income is assessed too - fortnightly.  So if you worked for nine months of the year, and then lost your job, had no other income other than unemployment benefits, this data matching/averaging process would raise a debt, because it would show income across the whole 12 months. It was a ridiculous idea, borne of desperation for advancement and budget savings.

Rick Morton's rage at what robodebt's architects perpetrated against some of Australia's most vulnerable people leaps off the page; it's visceral, and deserved. Rank and file Centrelink assessors were flagging early on that this method of assessing income was not tenable, lawyers issued opinions that was illegal under the social security act, and it still rolled on.

It's a detailed, furious read; nearly 450 pages (500 if you count the responses included from those responsible, which the book encourages you to do) detailing five years of ducking accountability, massaging language and twisting or avoiding the facts to get this scheme off the ground and keep it going.

Everyone in the Australian public service should read it; everyone who manages policy or ever has the choice between writing "This thing is broken" and "This thing may present challenges" should read it.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Classism

We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida

emotional lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

 

I grabbed this because I thought I'd need an antidote to Mean Streak, the other book I was reading. I really did — and as antidotes go, We'll Prescribe You A Cat was a pretty good one. Which is not to say it's unalloyed sweetness and light. 

The book's starting point is that there is a mysterious clinic in Kyoto, that is only there some of the time, for some people. The doctor is unusual and the prescriptions he makes even more so — they're cats. 

Each chapter is a fresh patient and a fresh cat - there's Bee, who helps salaryman Shuta find out that...maybe he really doesn't want to work in a sweatshop office environment after wall, and Margot, who reconnects Koga with his family, and with his new manager. Those two are pretty standard stories. 

Then there's Yoyuki, a little white kitten, who helps Megumi and Aobi, a mother and daughter, reconnect, and helps Megumi with the memory of an abandoned kitten from her own childhood. In this chapter, I feel like there's either an influence from or a nod to The Cat Returns, a Studio Ghibli film directed by Hiroyuki Morita. Yoyuki, the modern day kitten, is named after Yuki, a little white kitten that Megumi found as a child; one of the cats in The Cat Returns is named Yuki as well. The movie's Yuki is similarly an abandoned white kitten in flashback. Now, one meaning for Yuki is 'snow', so two white cats called Yuki isn't itself unusual — but movie Yuki observes that "life is hard", and Megumi makes a similar observation as an adult that child-Megumi couldn't, that life as an adult is tough. I might be reaching, but it feels like there's maybe a little nod there. Yoyuki (the chapter, not the cat) also has the first hint about the origin of the mysterious clinic — Aobi, the daughter, thinks that the nurse looks somehow familiar, maybe like a woman in a maiko's uniform she saw at a friend's dance practice. (Maiko: a trainee geiko, the Kyoto name for a geisha.) And a neighbour in the same building as the clinic warns Megumi and Aobi that there's something hinky about that apartment's history. 

Then we get to the last two stories, Tank and Tangerine, and Mimita. These two are much more closely tied together — and there's a time jump backwards too, that isn't signalled in the text, you have to put it together. When you do, you can deduce the full story of where the clinic came from, and the identity of the mysterious nurse and doctor who prescribe cats to help humans with their problems — after all, as Dr Nikké says, cats are superior to any other medication out there.. 
Spoilery thought: 

There's something uniquely cat-like about a cat — even the ghost of a cat, if that's what Dr Nikké actually is — regarding cats as being far superior to any human medication, isn't there... *g* 

I enjoyed reading We'll Prescribe You A Cat and I'm very glad to read that there's a sequel on the way in 2025. Most reviews I've read about this book use words like 'quirky' or 'whimsical' or the like, and there are certainly elements of that there too, but there's also an undercurrent of sadness and grieving, especially as you get to the last chapter, Mimita. It's not overwhelming and there's an element of resolution to it. Overall, it's an enjoyable book, and a pretty fast read. 

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

emotional funny reflective slow-paced

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

 If you've read and loved Liane Moriarty's previous books, you'll probably go for this one too. She has a very distinctive voice and style that's pretty consistent throughout all her novels, in much the same way that Caroline Lee is a consistent narrator for Moriarty audiobooks. So, no surprises. 

It's a slow burn of a novel and, at 500 pages there's certainly room for that. It took me a while to get into the groove with it, which I think has to do with the way characters are introduced: the 'Death Lady' is described for quite a long passage by everything she isn't, for example, and there's what feels like a cast of thousands of passengers that it takes a while to get to grips with. For me in the end, I kept having to think of them as 'the bride' or 'the overworked guy' and it was fortunate that the text isn't subtle with those reminders to help anchor readers amongst all those people. 

Moriarty's books have one thing in common with thriller novels — conservation of characters and details. In thrillers, it means the inconsequential person or detail is going to turn out to be consequential after all, and that's the case with Here One Moment as well; if you think a throwaway line is just that, you're wrong, it will come back into play in the last third or quarter of the book, guarantee it. In one way, you can admire the craft; in another, it undermines the ability to get lost in the story — or at least it does for me — because you're always trying to weave the inconsequential into the web, caught in the craft instead of the story. 

Or maybe that's just me, I don't know. 

Overall, though, enjoyable and it picked up pace as it went on.