Kribu
Good stuff:
The characterisation of Ten and Donna was good. Both came off very much in character. Also, the premise was interesting, and the adventure & action part definitely fun.
Stuff that didn't work for me so well:
There's a fine line between “good message I fully agree with” and “this is getting annoyingly preachy”, and for me, this one wobbled over that line a few times, especially in the end. Still, good messages are better than not-good messages.
A thing that early on threw me kind of out of being able to fully enjoy the book, and I had been until then: the usage of “CPU” and “hard drive” interchangeably, both to refer to, well, the computer/case/desktop tower/system unit if one wants to get technical. That box that stands separate from the monitor, you know? It's not “a huge CPU”. It's a case that houses the CPU, a.k.a. the processor (rather small these days), and the hard drive, and a lot of other cool stuff. You can't just pick up “the CPU”. Or to step close to the desk and yank the cables out of “the hard drive”, without opening up the case first. (And if one's smart enough to do that and just take the hard drive for evidence, they wouldn't be stupid enough to carry off the screens as well.)
.. yeah, I am aware that I'm ranting online about an irritating thing I read, yes. And that there's more than a bit of irony in me coming online to post this after reading this particular book. But eh. (I'm actually quite calm, if it helps. I'm just tired of it being 2016 and books still getting the most basic computer system components wrong..)
Overall, a book well worth reading, anyway, if one can put up with occasional preachiness and people having “huge CPUs” on their desk, and especially if one's a Ten & Donna fan and misses having them around. I'm not, not really, but Ten in book form has always been more fun for me than Ten on TV, and it was a fast, reasonably exciting and decent read.
I'm not entirely sure how one marks a book like this finished, and I'm fairly certain I haven't managed to explore all the possible story threads, but frankly, the book smells so bad that I can't seem to spend more than 8-10 minutes at a time with it before feeling like throwing up (yeah, I know, I'm supposed to love “the feel and smell of real books” but the combination of paper and ink is awful in this one, sorry).
So I'll probably be dipping in and out whenever I feel like it, but for the time being, I'm marking it finished since I've read at least a fair amount of the possibilities.
And. Well.
I didn't grow up with books of the “choose your own adventure” kind so maybe that's the problem, and obviously I'm not the target audience anyway, but whatever the reason, I'm not really getting on with the format. Maybe if the bits were longer? As it is, it seems I've spent twice as much time flipping the pages and trying to locate the next bit than I have reading, and this means a very disjointed reading experience.
Other than that - does it feel like all I'm doing is complaining? because it feels like that to me, oops - I actually enjoyed the story bits (that I could locate and tease out and make sense of) well enough. There's one with the Terileptils that was okay. And some possibilities involving Bess the barmaid that were promising.
Ultimately, I do think I'm just, well, not really the right audience for this. I'd much prefer a book of straightforward short stories - or barring that, a book with much longer sections between making one choice or another. But since it seems we're not getting any actual novels, or anything beyond comics featuring the Twelfth Doctor at all this year (other than the Christmas special on TV), this new line will have to do, I suppose. A chopped up, disjointed, ultimately quite unsatisfying Twelve is still better than no Twelve at all, after all.
... How far I have fallen.
I liked the premise but the book itself .. eh.
I think there's a reason why I prefer genre over American contemporary YA - with genre books, I can just go with the flow; with contemporary, it's like I'm supposed to be able to relate to what is going on and I just. Can't. It's all so thoroughly alien to me, this world of American teenagers, with everyone having cars and the proms and the obsessing over dates and .. eh. I've never experienced a life like that, so it's just hard to relate, and without that, it's just a bit dull.
(Also, Silvennoinen is not really a hard name to pronounce.)
But other than being, well, a bit dull and hard to relate to, it's not like it was bad or anything. And there were parts I liked well enough.
Two very different stories in this collection, so ... two opinions, really.
Loved pretty much everything about the first story, except that it could have been longer! But really, how could I not love a story that suggests Charlotte Bronte based Jane Eyre & Mr Rochester on Clara and the Doctor? At least someone noticed all that UST, then. :P Also, I rather enjoyed the art; Twelve's still short but properly curly grey hair in particular. hearteyes
... also, I wish I knew what the first story was called. (Unearthly Things, the TARDIS Wikia tells me. Either I'm blind or it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the collection!)
The longer story - The Hyperion Empire - I'm slightly less enamoured with. The story itself was okay, really, as was the characterisation (although Twelve felt more like his earlier S8 persona, even though this must have been set after Last Christmas), but the artwork .. uneven (I think the work of several artists over the course of the separate issues?) and really largely not to my taste, the style. Half the time, the Doctor even had brown hair, and I doubt I'd have recognised Kate Stewart without the text there to help me.
But yeah, storywise .. nothing super-special but fun enough, with a couple of supporting characters who weren't too bad either.
Too tired to write a long review but .. yeah, this worked for me. Really well.
I was a bit wary to start with - the format of this instalment of the Mary Russell books is really quite different from the rest of the series, the entire first half of the book being by and large a narrative about Mrs Hudson and her past - but I ended up captivated by it, loving the way the clues started adding up, enjoying the twists and turns along the way.
Not a book I'd recommend to anyone as their first foray into this particular world, as it's really quite uncharacteristic of the rest of the series, but for me? Very much enjoyed.
(ETA: added enjoyment was gained by someone's remark I saw on Twitter, about seeing Peter Capaldi as this particular Holmes, and now that the idea has been put into my head .. yeah, I could see that. Very easily. hearteyes mode activated)
I deliberated for a while over four or five stars - objectively, there are things I could complain about, if I wanted to - but .. after giving it some thought, I've just realised I don't actually want to complain about them. Not about anything, really.
So. Yeah. I've pretty much enjoyed every book in this series and this was no exception. For those who've been following Harriet's adventures throughout the Geek Girl books, Head Over Heels is a warm and familiar welcome back to this world, and just like the previous books, it's a wonderful mixture of humour (honestly, I don't laugh out loud very often when I read but I do with these), drama and emotion that can kick you hard right where it hurts most.
If I had any quibbles at all, I'd say that at some point, there's the danger that the now-familiar pattern of funny moments - and moments where everything is going so well and you're cheering for Harriet and actually believing that maybe this time, things will work out for the best - being immediately followed by something Very Dramatic happening that threatens to ruin everything will start to wear out its welcome and become a routine. As the series does have a planned end, I'm hopeful that isn't going to happen for me (and it didn't, although I've become more acutely aware of it with every book). But anyway, in this one it still worked.
Anyway. I planned to write a longer review but .. I'm not really a plans and details and long reviews person right now, so there you go.
* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thanks!
Hmm.
Not astonishingly mind-blowing but considering that (a) it's short stories, which rarely wow me, and (b) it's Ashildr, whom I never warmed to for various reasons (not that I'm sure we were supposed to warm to her, in spite of the character's potential for some deep thoughts, some of that potential even realised), I actually liked it quite a bit.
The first story was probably the weakest of the lot but it was entertaining enough; I liked the second and fourth ones as I'm easily entertained with more straight-forward adventure. The third one, with the kids, was obviously the one with most depth, and I appreciated it, but it failed to tug on my heartstrings (unlike when Ashildr's paths crossed with Clara & the Doctor again on TV and .. things .. happened, which I've not fully recovered from and will probably never forgive her), so it remains just a story, like the others.
Anyway. A nice little book, all things considered, and for anyone curious enough about what Ashildr was up to during the long, long years on Earth between The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived, this gives some rather satisfying - if brief - glimpses on her many adventures.
Probably the weakest of the trilogy, but it was still a fairly enjoyable, fast read, and it tied up all the various loose endings in neat enough ways (a tad too neat for my liking, really), so I'm not going to grumble too much.
Except for the lack of Saul. I really liked Saul. Rather wish there'd been more Saul in this book instead of ... well, any of the other soldiery types, really.
Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, I actually enjoyed this book more than the first one.
Perhaps because of reading them back to back, I was already so immersed in this world that the more chopped-up narration - alternating between Avry and Kerrick - didn't bother me, and all the characters from book 1 were still fresh in my mind and it wasn't as confusing to keep track of everyone + all the new characters as it probably would have been if I'd taken a break, or perhaps it's just that the relative lack of romantic focus and more world-building politics actually worked for me.
Also, and no less importantly, while I still have no particular love for Kerrick, he got a fair bit of fleshing out this time around, so instead of being just a boring personality-lacking person obsessed with Prince Ryne, he became a character in his own right. So that helped.
Anyway. Yes. Mean cliffhanger is mean, and now I'm really glad I have book 3 waiting for me already.
3.5 stars.
This one had quite a few problems, from some weird plot inconsistencies to a dull love interest to a somewhat too foolish-to-live heroine, but once I actually got into it, it was a fast and engaging read, and definitely got me into this world enough to want to see how it continues (which is fortunate since I bought all three books ages ago).
Stars. Sigh. Always a difficult issue. Maybe, if Goodreads had half stars, I'd be tempted to give it two and a half stars; as it is, when having to choose between “it was ok” and “liked it”, I'm leaning far more towards the “it was ok” side, overall. So two stars it is.
Sigh.
I'll attempt to flesh this review out a bit (if I can manage it) closer to actual release date or when it's out, because there were some rather specific things I had specific problems with that would require me to go into spoiler territory, but ... well, in general, the very knowledge that it took me five days to make my way through the book, where until now I've basically devoured every Derek Landy book in a day, two at the most, is probably saying something.
I'm fairly sure a lot of readers will love it. It's not a horrible book (I know some will disagree but when I'm rating it “it was ok”, that's basically what I mean) and I think that for many who aren't as sensitive to specific issues (which I'm not, but there were things that made me wince because of the way they were included), don't mind the new side characters and - perhaps even more importantly - aren't solid fans of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, it will feel like a rather entertaining, fresh, action-filled book with a relatively solid central plot.
To me... well. It felt tired. Boring, even. Going through the motions, for a lot of it. There were some really good bits - most of the scenes where it was just Milo and Amber, really - but unfortunately, for me, those bits were in the minority. The banter in particular, which has generally been the highlight of any Derek book, just felt so ... drained. It didn't sparkle. It was very samey and very little of it was actually funny. It could be just that I'm drifting away from this sort of stuff, I'm not sure, but .. the new characters and their banter was so interchangeable so often that it wasn't fun to read page after page after page of it.
I'm not going to complain about the tedious gore because that's what this series is about to a big extent but since I'm not a big fan, it didn't help.
The very ending .. I'm not entirely happy about how it was written but the premise is intriguing enough that in spite of all my grumbling, I think I will want to see how this trilogy ends.
* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thanks!
I'm never the world's biggest fan of short stories in general, mostly because they always leave me wanting more & tend to feel a bit insubstantial and overall unsatisfying, but this was a fun little thing, with plenty of humour and a dash of adventure.
Plus it got me back in the mood for more Mary Russell coming up in a scant month or so, which is never a bad thing.
Somewhere between three and four stars. Hard to decide with this one, really.
It took me a long while to actually get into this book - the pace was very slow to begin with (at least for me) and trying to make sense of the world (I suppose .. Argentinian android noir in Antarctica in a rather alternative timeline in a somewhat unspecified time (1970s? 1980s? thereabouts?)) took some time, but once it got going, and I was drawn into this world and the characters and the actual plot started to unravel, it was really quite good.
I think.
Possibly.
Anyway, yeah. Odd book, one I had to be in the mood for reading, but one I really don't regret reading.
I'd forgotten a lot during the long wait for this book but Grave Visions did a good job getting me back up to speed, and while I've sort of drifted away a bit from gobbling down urban fantasy and the romance aspects aren't doing a thing for me, it didn't really take me long to remember just why I've enjoyed this series so much.
Not that I can really put it into words - it just sort of works.
Anyway, yeah: enjoyed it, and with the way it ended, I'm assuming there'll be more planned in the series. I'm be looking forward to it.
Probably more like 4.5 stars. I'd actually forgotten all about this series during my not-really-reading-much phase that lasted a year, but I was randomly browsing the stuff on my Kindle and came across it and ... yeah, I enjoyed it. Nicely paced, fun, a few twists I hadn't expected.
And it was helpful, considering how much I've forgotten about the first two books in the series, that this one focused on new characters - it made for a good new jumping-in point with a nice way to remind readers what it was all about.
Fittingly, I read this one entirely on a plane taking me first to and then again back home from the Doctor Who Festival in London last weekend.
And it reminded me once again that while the Twelfth Doctor is MY Doctor (and this is where I'm really tempted to insert some utterly fangirlish, smitten gushing over how ridiculously gorgeous Peter Capaldi is in real life, especially close up, and how wonderfully firm and warm his hand is, and how radiant and genuine his smile is, and how I melted into a little puddle of goo when getting my photo with him), some of my favourite Doctor Who in book form is still, and consistently, from Eleven's era.
I don't know why this is but somehow most authors seem to have an easier time getting a good handle on the characters and their voice with Eleven, Amy and Rory, and when you add in a really rather original, interesting plot - because at least I haven't seen a lot of sci-fi or time-travel stories that take place almost entirely in a contemporary 21st century London bank, with a lot of talk about presentations and board meetings and compound interest etc - then the result can't really be anything but a pretty great book.
So, yeah, I actually really enjoyed this one.
I'm really glad that the last of this year's otherwise underwhelming bunch of Twelfth Doctor novels finally turned out to be something I could actually, genuinely, enjoy.
This was fun. Proper space exploration, time travel, dangerous situations (and gory deaths!), fun. The guest cast was rather large but pretty well drawn - I got a sense of personality and character with each of them, which doesn't always happen with large casts in short novels. The plot was probably the weakest part of the book - I found myself wishing this whole Glamour Chronicles thing had not been a, well, thing, because I think this could have made a stronger story if it hadn't had to try and tie up some awfully vague loose ends from the other two books.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, this book actually featured Twelve and Clara in significant roles. Seriously, when I read a Doctor Who novel, I want it to have the Doctor in it (and for more than a few brief scenes). Especially when it comes to Twelve. Adorable, glorious, grumpy, excitable, arrogant, delightful Twelve. wants to cuddle Twelve
Also, and even more importantly, it even had a character mention Twelve's “lovely curls”. Yes, finally an official tie-in book that acknowledges that! And then there was hair-ruffling, too. (I wonder if the author has lurked in places that fangirls inhabit. Because Twelve's hair, and Capaldi's habit of ruffling those glorious curls of his, is a very well-discussed topic. Ahem.)
(I mean, just look at him. This. This is what I mean.)
... right, I should probably restrain myself and get back to reviewing the book instead of gushing over Twelve and/or the utter gorgeousness that is Peter Capaldi.
Clara was perhaps a little, hm, weaker than I'm used to seeing her, but hey, for her the adventures came straight after an exhausting day at work, so there's that. And she handled herself well. And her relationship with the Doctor was good fun. I loved the bit with the hot chocolate!
Also, there was space travel. And time travel. And alien planets. And lots of gory deaths. Did I mention gory deaths? Yeah. (Mind you, one of the people who met a rather gory end miraculously had a weapon pointed at them a few chapter later. Oopsie at editing stage, I guess. Fortunately I didn't come across too many of such issues.)
Eh. Too many characters, none of whom (apart from the Doctor who only got any noticeable page time a couple of times during the book) I cared about or wanted to care about, lots of .. er, I supposed vaguely amusing writing, very little plot (and what there was of it, was pretty confusing for most of it).
Just .. a lot of flashy words with no real substance, really. I liked bits of it, but other than the last fifth or so, I struggled to really even keep my attention on it.
Sigh.
I'd blame the fact that I was only vaguely familiar with Benny (and haven't listened to any Big Finish audios at all) on my lack of interest on basically the entire cast of characters, but Benny and her entourage were all introduced well enough, so it's not that I was confused by them - I just struggled to figure out why I should care, as I didn't actually particularly warm to any of them. And they were the good guys. Add in a bunch of really quite sketchily drawn villains and .. mostly, I think the book just struggled because the cast of characters was simply too large for a book so brief, especially when one buys the book for the Doctor.
Too tired for an actual review, but while there were things I could have done with a bit less of (the whole jealousy angle), it kept my interest throughout and .. well, I didn't expect that ending!
Characters are also getting nicely fleshed out (except, still, for Lockwood, but I guess that is by design, since we're seeing him through Lucy's POV). And I love the skull. Can't help it. The skull is awesome.
Eh. I'm sure it's a book that will appeal to a lot of people, and it's objectively not bad or anything, but it just didn't work for me on ... well, pretty much any level, other than perhaps the opening bit (or the bit of opening with Clara and the Doctor).
Characterisation was okay-ish - Clara more so than the Doctor, who, while he wasn't “off” as such, I felt was reduced to a smallish set of “these are the characteristics of Twelve” (probably not helped by how little he was in it) - but frankly the whole thing just bored me, I wasn't a fan of the writing style, I didn't grow to care about the guest cast (who were in it an awful lot more than Clara or especially the Doctor) and I am not a huge fan of pseudo-mediaeval stuff even at the best of times, so... Yeah. Probably in my three least favourite New Who tie-in books, and I can't say they've all been shining jewels.
(Also, I'm so tired of alien pseudo-mediaeval worlds being populated not just with carbon copies of any random unoriginal European historical fantasy settings ever but also with people there having names like Conrad and Bernhardt and Mikhail. Ridiculously small complaint, perhaps, but eh. I'm just a tad annoyed, I guess, since I actually bought the book twice, buying also the Kindle version when I realised I didn't have the patience to wait for my preordered-months-ago hardbacks to get to me.)
Short review because I'm completely wiped out by squeeing and fangirling over the brand new (as of the moment of writing this review) Doctor Who Series 9 trailer, but anyway, I finished this earlier today and, as the rating shows, really liked it.
I admit I was quite hesitant when I first heard about this book - it's been a long time really since I've read nonfiction, and also, I'm not very sure of the entire concept of “actual science” in combination with “Doctor Who” (~thinks Kill the Moon and Into the Forest of the Night just for starters, and I actually liked both those episodes~).
Then I heard the book also has a bunch of brand new short stories, and my interest went up several notches. And I figured “okay, I'll get it and read the short stories”.
.. soooooo. I actually ended up reading the whole thing? Obviously the science chapters are written on a level that should be understandable also for younger readers, but hey, it's been 20 years since I last gave my brain a workout, so that suited me just fine. And I really enjoyed the science chapters, although the ties they had to the short stories were rather tenuous.
I liked the short stories as well. I especially like that we get a new story for each (numbered) Doctor and four (and a bit) new ones for Twelve. :D Also, there were some gloriously shippy Twelve/Clara moments in some of them, so that helped too. :D
But yeah, I actually enjoyed this bunch of stories - some were better than others, but I didn't dislike any of them, and most were pretty interesting as well as paced okay.
Actual rating: somewhere around 3.5-3.75 stars, rounded up because I did enjoy it, overall. Most of it.
I'd probably give four stars to the first three quarters of it, and .. 2.5 to the last bit, or something like that, but I'm very sure there are people who will love the final bits, so there's that.
Anyway. I should say right away that - as anyone who knows me even a little bit will probably be aware of - I'm a huge fan of Skulduggery Pleasant. This is both a good thing and a bad thing when it comes to reading (and reviewing) Demon Road because comparisons are going to be inevitable. And I was both anticipating this book and rather expecting to be disappointed, because really, how could anything measure up to the glory that is Skulduggery?
So I was a bit anxious, really, when I got my hands on the ARC (thank you, HarperCollins!), and started reading it last night. Would I love it? Would I hate it? Would I go “well, it's an okay book, but somewhat disappointing?”.
The answer, as said above, is that I did in fact enjoy it. Most of it, anyway; most of it a very great deal.
It absolutely has all the things that have become Derek Landy's trademarks: the wit, the humour (slightly less of it than in Skulduggery Pleasant, possibly, but plenty there), snappy dialogue, rounded, interesting and well-developed characters, including even very secondary (or tertiary, etc) side characters who only appear in one or two scenes. Fighting. Lots of fighting. Gore. Lots of gore. Action, adventure, chases, fantastical creatures, a cool classic car.
In that sense, I suppose it didn't really feel that different from Skulduggery: anyone who is a fan of that should probably enjoy this, I think. It's also definitely different enough in its plot and setting that it never felt like a rehash of the same basic story, which can be an issue with some writers with one massively successful series under their belts. Characters... well, yes, there are obvious basic types that Derek seems to like - there's glimpses of China in some of the characters, Glen who unfortunately brought to mind the most annoying parts of Fletcher and Scapegrace combined.
The good.
The characters! Well, most of them. I loved Amber's parents. I liked Milo, although I think it might take another book or two to really get a handle on this guy; what I saw so far, I did like. I think. He has potential, anyway.
Most importantly, what with her being the main character and all, I enjoyed Amber.
Also... hm, I guess the general plot? And pacing. I didn't have problems with that really - I enjoyed the slower bits as much as (if not more than) the faster-paced parts. The flow was good and I only put the book down once, when I really had to go to sleep and there was just a bit too much left to persist. Otherwise it was just hours of reading, which isn't something I've managed a lot this year.
The less good.
Glen. I'm sorry, but I just never really warmed to him, for a multitude of reasons that I will not go into here because I want to keep this as spoiler-free as I can.
The fighting and the gore. I know, I know; how can I be a Derek fan and not enjoy that? Honestly, that was always my least favourite part of the Skulduggery series, and - what I think didn't help here - I've been desensitised enough by now that very little in the last 15-20% of the book either really excited or shocked me, so it was all kinda ... meh.
Anyway. Other than the obligatory gory fighting stuff, did I love it? Yes, I did. Not as much as Skulduggery, no, but more than I frankly expected to. I came to care about Amber and her plight very quickly, there were bits that made me grin and bits that made me nod appreciatively, there's enough intrigue about this world and certain characters that I very much hope to learn more about them. As I said above, I could barely put the book down, and I am very much looking forward to the second instalment, out in March.
Absolutely recommended for anyone who likes a bit of darkness in their YA (this really isn't “typical YA”, whatever that means, even though it's got demons and a cool 16-year-old female protagonist in it - and the basic premise in particular would, I think, be considered fairly dark even for fans of dystopian or zombie stories, although this doesn't belong in either of those genres), doesn't mind a light tinkling of horror & splattergore and likes some fun.
* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thanks!
Two rather fun stories.
I wasn't really super-keen on the art - the Doctor was recognisable enough, I guess, although mostly thanks to that jacket than anything else (that said, I did like all the panels that just showed his eyes) but I'd never have known Clara was Clara if she hadn't been with Twelve and referred to as, well, Clara - and in some ways I found Twelve's characterisation a little simplistic, basically just relying on a couple of his less endearing traits, but the, those stories were probably written during the early days of Twelve, so...
Anyway, I enjoyed this collection, and I'm definitely looking forward to more.