Kribu
Probably not a book I'll be spending forever thinking about now that I've read it, but I enjoyed this - a fun, well-paced kids' science fiction adventure, with both fairly serviceable characters (often an issue in middle-grade books) and a decent plot.
Even if elements of Mars Evacuees have been done before - “let us all live together and fight for a common cause instead of fighting each other”, learning to share your home with refugees/immigrants from a very different culture is not a bad message in a children's book, obviously, but neither is it dazzlingly original, and bits of it (mercifully a very small part of the book) clearly owed quite a bit to Lord of the Flies (and any other book of the “what really happens if you leave a bunch of kids on their own without adults there to make sure they don't all viciously kill each other” kind since) - it had enough of its own ideas and mostly, well, was just a good and exciting adventure.
Too tired to review, but yeah, this was good.
And while at times I wanted to punch the protagonist/narrator in the face, I really do appreciate having such a ... real, human, flawed, main character.
It's a dash more literary than most crime/police/detective books I read, which made me a little worried at first, but it wasn't overpoweringly so. So that worked.
Actual rating: more like 2.5 stars. In other words, the sort of book that I never, at any point, thought particularly good, but .. it was readable, enough so that I finished it in a day and a half which is - considering how much effort reading books has been for me this year - pretty good evidence for me obviously caring enough to want to know what would happen next.
That said... the writing felt rather pedestrian (not that I want high-flying literary language, but it felt rather... too simplistic, I suppose, even for a YA book), the characters, including Rose, the protagonist, didn't have an awful lot of depth, and while the first half or three quarters of the plot felt fairly reasonable and even realistic at times, I wasn't thrilled by the way it ended.
Still, the ending was an obvious set-up for the next book in the series, which I already have, so ... rounding up to a tentative “I liked it” in the hopes that whenever I actually get to reading the second book, it'll resolve some of the issues I had with this one.
I should say, to start with, that I'm a relative stranger to comic books. I've read some (mostly various Disney things featuring various ducks and mice), but it's never really been a medium I've felt terribly interested in - didn't really grow up with them, I suppose.
I'm trying to change that, though, not the least because I'm just so hungry for any Twelfth Doctor content I can get my hands on that ignoring an entire medium would not be a great idea. So this free comic book day issue (also out as a free ebook, yay, for those of us who don't actually have a participating comic shop nearby) featuring Ten, Eleven and Twelve short stories was a nice way to make a proper start.
Anyway. The stories were ... short. LOL. I think my favourite of the three was the Tenth Doctor one - not my favourite Doctor, not by a long shot, but it was a nice little self-contained story which got a few chuckles out of me and flowed pretty well. The Twelve & Clara story, which I was most curious about, started off well (and I liked the artwork better) but ended so abruptly I had to page back and make sure I hadn't missed anything. And the Eleven story was... interesting idea, but I sort of managed to lose interest before it was over, which is quite an achievement for a six page (or something like that) comic.
Overall though, it did serve the purpose of making me want more. Not more Ten or Eleven stories, necessarily, but I'm now quite looking forward to more, anyway!
This is a pretty tricky book to rate, really.
On the one hand it's .. well, it's a novelisation, and a very good one - of a story what is widely considered to be one of Doctor Who's all time best (and is certainly among my own favourites). One that expands a bit on the televised story, especially in character backgrounds; that blends the scripts and the actual televised bits nicely, and has a decent amount of humour in it.
On the other hand ... well, good as it is, it's a novelisation, and as such, it didn't really offer me an awful lot of surprises or twists or turns. Even if I've only seen the story once, and that was years ago.
Anyway, I liked it. It's a good novelisation. It took me forever to actually make my way through it, granted (although it was the beginning that was excruciatingly slow; once I got going, I managed to finish it off on two separate days), but I shouldn't really blame the book for my own current inability to focus on, well, books.
Basically, I think this review pretty much says what I thought.
But just so that this wouldn't be a “oh, look at that other person's words instead” sort of review ... this was, well, okay. I liked it.
It had a solid enough story - young protagonist, girl from a Catholic family in very early 1980s Glasgow, really wanting to follow her dream and be a journalist instead of doing what her family circle expects and demands of her, i.e. settle down young with a suitable man, get married and dedicate the rest of her life to popping out lots of kids and taking care of home, gets rather deeply into a horrible crime she's researching due to having a semi-personal connection with it and having hunches about the police not getting things quite right.
The characters and setting worked. They felt realistic, Paddy in particular, but also quite a few of the secondary characters, even those we met quite briefly, came across as real people, with pasts and futures and lives of their own, instead of just being there to advance the plot. That's always a good thing.
The mystery/crime part worked, too, although I kept feeling a bit annoyed at how slow Paddy was at times when I'd made the relevant realisations pages if not chapters earlier. But then, it's much easier to read someone else's story than figure things out when they're happening in your own!
What did not work for me was “the other” Paddy Meehan's story. Yeah, it ... well, I see, I think, what the author wanted to achieve, and it was an interesting idea - having this girl share her name with (and thus have some interest in) a falsely imprisoned and therefore pretty well-known small-time crook - but the execution just ... yeah. No. I didn't care about the other Paddy Meehan, I wasn't interested in his life or thoughts, and having entire chapters dedicated to him when I was much more interested in what was going on in girl-Paddy's life ... that just pulled me out of the story and made me grit my teeth to make my way through those bits to get back to the more interesting stuff again.
Anyway. I did enjoy the book okay - not sure I'll want more, but it's nicely standalone, so I don't really feel any need to.
Well, this was ... okay? Not particularly mind-blowing in any way, and I'm sure I'd find things to nitpick, but in my current state of mind, an easy, not really brain-taxing but moderately exciting read was what worked, so there's that.
Light on the characterisation and not super-deep on the plot, but it rolled along at a reasonable pace, events made enough sense that it didn't make me groan, and while none of the main characters, including Jett, the girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy protagonist, really got to be explored properly (seriously, all I learned about Jett, really, is that she was 17, pretended to be a boy in order to ride around on her own looking for her lost twin brother - disappeared five years before but apparently world-wise enough at 12, before disappearing, to teach Jett all about how to act like a boy, including eyeing girls, and knew a lot about zombies and hoodoo) ... well, they may have been cardboard-thin (at least Jett and Gibbons got some characterisation, poor White Fox got none really), but they also didn't really offend me.
Rating: if I'm honest, probably more like two stars than three, but it felt nice to read something different-ish again and it didn't take me forever to finish, so three it is.
This is pretty much a book that would only make sense to people who are familiar with the world of The Thick of It, the wonderfully funny (and very sweary) British political satire show, as it's very much a compendium to the show and requires knowing both the setting and the characters.
Anyway, for any fan of TTOI, I think it's a pretty great addition. It's not a must-have - well, it sort of is if you love Malcolm Tucker (are there fans of TTOI who don't love Malcolm Tucker?) and in particular if you love Malcolm in a way that makes you appreciate those A4 colour pictures of him accompanying the interview, because phwoar, he's hot - and the mixture of funny and bizarre/awkward doesn't always work as well in print as it did on TV, but it's got a lot of good bits.
So, yeah. I enjoyed it, from the e-mails to Malcolm's how-to guides (and I loved a lot of Nicola's stuff as well!), and the ending was pretty much perfect.
This is one of those times that I wish I could rate the book, as an object, separately from its contents.
Because this is one lovely hardback. Double-page opening illustrations for each story, the dark blue edges of the pages, and of course the main draw of the hardback for those, like me, who'd already bought - and read - all or most of the individual stories as they were originally released as ebooks: the wrap-around dust jacket, containing an additional, exclusive, heavily illustrated (very) short Twelve & Clara story.
It's a gorgeous book, and while it took me a while to decide to buy it, because it wasn't cheap, I'd already bought and read all but one of the inside stories, and didn't really care for most of them. But hey, pretty book and some “official” Twelve & Clara in this excruciatingly long eight-month wait between series 8 and 9? How could I resist.
Anyway. I've rated & reviewed most of the stories before, so I'm not going to bother doing it again, especially as I didn't re-read them - I'll just say that they ranged from “urgh, awful” to “pretty decent”, with mostly “meh”. I'm glad to say that the one I hadn't read before, Anti-Hero by Stella Duffy (a Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe story), was more towards the “pretty decent” end of that scale, being .. well, basically a rather nice short story, even though it suffered from what 99% of DW short stories I've read in the last few years suffer from - a good start, nicely building up the story, establishing the location and characters, rolling onwards at a nice pace, and then ... suddenly, the end. Blegh. I don't like short stories, really.
The dust jacket story is really very short (500 words, maybe? I didn't count - it took me too much effort to just unwrap the cover and keep turning it around to find all the bits in the right order, but that was a lot of fun really! - but yeah, it's definitely a short story, considering it has to fit inside a dust jacket with lots of illustrations) but it was a cool little vignette and I enjoyed it. You don't really lose much for not reading it, but I really don't regret getting the book for it.
I've loved the Geek Girl series since reading the first book. Even though I'm really not in the target audience, I have been a teenage girl myself, so it works for me on that level - obviously I've never been a supermodel, and neither have I ever been quite as, hmm, extreme as Harriet, but quite honestly, there are things about her that make me recognise myself in her.
I think that's both part of why I like her, and why I keep wincing while reading about her trials and tribulations.
Anyway - All That Glitters, the fourth book in the series, picks up where Picture Perfect left off, with Harriet back at home and her old school. While I enjoyed the previous books' foreign settings, the more “familiar” setting in this one worked better for me, I think.
In some ways, I did feel this book was a bit less... steady? ... not even sure what to call it, than the previous books. Could just be though that I don't quite remember the previous books to that level of detail, but somehow this felt more like a rollercoaster of emotions, with even sharper ups and downs. So that took me a while to get into, and at times, it felt a bit exhausting, but I did get used to it and didn't really mind.
I did do a lot of wincing though throughout the book. The second-hand embarrassment kind of wincing. The “this is a car crash waiting to happen and there is nothing I can do to stop Harriet” kind of wincing. That poor, silly, naive child - although that of course is also a major part of her appeal. The themes of bullying and acceptance, the desire for acceptance and belonging - all that came through even louder and clearer in this book - and it's hard, at least for me, to not feel for Harriet as she goes through all those cycles of popularity.
It's not all wincing, of course! That's one of the things I actually really love about the series - how it manages to combine real, hurting, serious issues with a lot of humour and a light, almost breezy writing style. It might not work for everyone, but it works for me, and while laughing out loud at books isn't really my thing, I did get to grin quite a bit.
(Also, and this is definitely a personal note: I really liked Steve the caretaker. I hope we haven't seen the last of him.)
* ARC of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thanks!
Not my favourite book in the series - probably down among the last two, together with Moon Over Soho - but still a worthy addition to what may well be my current favourite urban fantasy series.
I mostly just wish there'd been more Nightingale (or any Nightingale for that matter), and I am not a huge fan of Peter/Beverley, so there's that. But other than that, yeah, enjoyed it.
Hmm. Not really even sure what to rate it.
Dreadfully slow beginning - so much so that I tackled maybe a tenth of it and then just set the book aside for weeks. That coincided with a reading slump, so I'm not sure how much blame goes to the book and how much to me, but anyway, I really just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm or interest to continue.
Second attempt went much better, and I liked the middle part of the book well enough - when all the exciting stuff was happening. (Okay, I'm shallow. I want excitement in the plot, when the characters bore me, and those ones, I'm afraid, did.) And I suppose the excitement lasted until the end, but ... honestly, I'm not into all this psychological stuff (I'd almost add “especially when it's white men psychoanalysing women and black men”, because at times, that veered a tad close to making it really difficult for me to relate to Norman or empathise with him, but eh, everyone has their angles and I'm pretty sure I really wouldn't like to read not-white not-men psychoanalysing anyone either).
So ... overall, it was okay and with enough excitement for most of it to keep me reading once I actually made my way through the beginning? Objectively, yeah, there were all those attempts at deep thoughts and making you think about things and whatever, but I'm just not at a point in my life where I care for that very much.
(I'm rather hoping that with this, my absolute & total reading slump is over, at least in the sense of not dreading the idea of reading a book again. Even though I probably won't go back to binge-reading any time soon yet.)
Being the latest release in the Russell & Holmes books, which I fell in love with over the last couple of years, this may well have been my most anticipated book of 2015. Although I admit I was also a little worried, since the two previous instalments had, for me, lost a little of the shine of the earlier books.
I'm not sure I'd say Dreaming Spies is at the absolute top of the series either, but I did enjoy it. It wasn't exactly bursting with exciting adventure or daring escapades, but it felt ... nice. Cosy. Warm. Certainly interesting enough to keep me from putting it down (too often, anyway). It was also nice to have a book for a change where Russell & Holmes spent most of the time working together, but on the other hand, something about them was a bit .. lacking. Missing.
Anyway. I liked it a lot, and it was worth the wait, but ultimately, if I ever decide to re-read some of the books in this series, then unless I do a complete re-read, this is not one I can see myself reaching for again any time soon.
Sort of hovering between three and four stars - I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, most of the time. It got a bit sillier towards the end, but eh, whatever.
Plenty of fun, light moments with some actually rather moving and horrifying parts, so pretty much what I like DW tie-in novels to be.
Also, I keep being amazed by how much more I like Eleven's written adventures compared to Eleven on TV. It's not the character (and I think Eleven was very well written here), as I rather enjoy Eleven, so I guess it's just that his era on TV didn't work for me at all.
All things considered, probably not the best or cliché-free urban fantasy ever, but it worked for me.
Don't really have much to say, but ... yeah. I enjoyed it. Scarlett was a decent protagonist, believable enough and bad-ass without having a huge chip on her shoulder and actually letting other people help her when needed, the plot was engaging enough, and for a change I didn't even mind the sort-of love triangle, probably because it was kept fairly light and there was over-dramatic no plot-hindering agonising over whether to pick the hot blond were or the hot Latino cop. (Plus if one must have a love triangle, it helps to have both guys be fairly decent.)
I have mixed feelings about this one.
Interesting worldbuilding - a sort of a mix of alternate universe and alternative history, set in the future, feels steampunkish but is really quite considerably different in nature - but .... then there was the requisite mooning over a pretty young man, and the plot was kind of meandering around and only really got somewhere towards the end (or rather that's when I realised that there is a plot at all), and I never really properly warmed to Vespa, and ... eh.
I liked bits of it quite well, and then there were bits where I struggled to keep awake (my usual reading time is around between 7-10 pm, so it's not like I actually read in bed with the aim to fall asleep), so... yeah. Mixed feelings.
Actual rating: 3.5-3.75, but there's just something not quite letting me rate it as “really liked it”.
I did like it, but ... dunno. Perhaps the pace was a bit too slow for me right now. Or it was just that the central mystery, while certainly interesting as such, never properly captivated me. Or perhaps it was the “lyrical singing of jackdaws” that kicked me out of believing in the story and never quite let me back in again. Who knows.
Anyway, still a good book, and Rutledge is a terrific character. But I think I'll need to take care to judge my mood better whenever I pick up the next book.
Hmph.
Mixed feelings about this one, and not a lot to say.
Basically ... I liked the book well enough, but there was not one. single. thing. about it that screamed (or even whispered) Doctor Who to me. (Other than the cover and stuff.)
And more to the point, there wasn't one single thing about Prisoner 428 that said “Twelfth Doctor” to me. Not even a little bit. Sigh.
Actually, other than being called The Doctor, I didn't even get The Doctor from him. Like, not even a generic Doctor vibe. Just some random guy who accidentally repeats some phrases we've had on the show and tinkers a bit, but somehow he managed to do so in a way that, try as I might (and I tried very hard because I wanted my Twelve), I couldn't hear in Twelve's voice at all, and neither could I see Twelve in him.
And there was some girl named Clara, whom the Doctor travels with, but I think it's just a coincidence that her name was also Clara Oswald. She could have been called, dunno, Mary Smith or whatever, and I'd never have suspected this was supposed to be Clara.
Meh.
That aside, a reasonably okay little book. Just really disappointing.
Well. This was pretty much what I'd expect from a Justin Richards NSA - pretty light but entertaining enough.
Oddly enough, considering this was written before any of Twelve's first series had aired, I'm actually glad I read this now, and not, say, 3-4 episodes into S8. I'd have more complaints about characterisation if I'd done that. As it is, I don't think Twelve was characterised particularly weakly - he's recognisable enough. I just wish there'd been more of him in this book!
My one serious complaint has to do with Jenny and Vastra: I didn't actually mind them not having much to do here, since I don't particularly love either of them, but you'd never guess from this book that they're a couple. Which, since in Deep Breath they could barely go for 30 seconds without “we're together, you know”, “we're married”, “we both really like girls”, “mmm, girls”, “she's my wife”, etc, didn't feel particularly in character (honestly, it irritated me to no end in Deep Breath, so that's not really what I missed) but more worryingly, came off a bit like erasing a rather significant point about their relationship, reducing them to lizard woman and her maid instead of a married couple.
On the plus side, Strax seemed in character and I rather enjoyed him.
The plot wasn't bad - light, but solid enough.
Overall, well - I put off reading this for one reason, which was to get a fix of Twelve & Clara once S8 was over, and on that front, it did its job. Even if I could have wished for a bit more of, well, Twelve. And Clara, for that matter.
... I finished this book an hour ago and I just realised I can't remember how it ended. :- Granted, this possibly says more about me than the book. But, eh. (Now that I'm consciously thinking about it, I'm mostly remembering, though. I think.)I liked this series. I really did. And in a lot of ways, Undivided is a good, satisfying ending: it ties up loose ends, it answers a lot of the questions, we get the kind of ending that was basically a given.Just, eh. Something was missing for me from this, something that was there in the first three books. The spark? The excitement? This one had chapters upon chapters where I literally kept nodding off every two minutes (not very late in the evening). Then something exciting happened. Then back to exposition and character backstories and... eh.In a way, I know I'm complaining about things I shouldn't perhaps complain about. I know the occasionally more sombre approach and slower pacing were needed - the subject matter, the themes required it. It wasn't supposed to be about excitement.Even so. At some point along the road, I realised I'd just stopped really caring about most of the characters. And then I realised I was more looking forward to the chapters of the various baddies, not the good guys. And then I realised I had started hoping the bad guys would kill off the good guys. And then I realised I was vaguely shipping a good guy with her thoroughly evil kidnapper.At that point, I kind of realised something was off. None of that happening was my intention...Anyway, yeah. Good series, glad it's over.
Actual rating: somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. Can't really decide...
First off, I should say I'm not a Trekkie. I have seen maybe a handful of Star Trek episodes put together from all the various series, so I'm not entirely ignorant either - and the concept of redshirts has probably entered if not the public consciousness, then at least the overall consciousness of science fiction fans in general.
Still, I suspect I might have got a bit more out of the main part of the story if I was more of a Trek fan. As it is, I ... well, it was largely enjoyable, occasionally funny, sometimes poignant, and with some interesting existential questions thrown in. On the other hand, I struggled with the writing style chosen for the main part of the story, and I never really actually came to care enough for Dahl or any of the other characters.
Oddly enough, all three codas worked better for me.
