An adorable little tale about a future where Christmas has been privatized and people try their best to celebrate it anyway. And of course, because it's Mieville, count on some leftist groups trying to reclaim their beloved holiday and being quite incapable to agree on just how to go about it....more
This book’s subject is both fascinating and very weird, and I wonder if one’s enjoyment of it doesn’t hinge entirely on how one reacts to the idea thaThis book’s subject is both fascinating and very weird, and I wonder if one’s enjoyment of it doesn’t hinge entirely on how one reacts to the idea that there are such objects as books bound in human skin (anthropodermic bibliopegy is the standardized formula regarding this… practice). My curiosity towards bizarre and, let’s face it, morbid subject matters made this book kind of irresistible, though I must say it didn’t turn out how I expected!
This horror story loving gal was hoping for a book about cultists who bind their grimoires in the skin of their sacrificial victims under gibbous moons… No such luck! Lovecraft, “Hocus Pocus” and “Supernatural” greatly exaggerated the prevalence of books bound in human skin – and got the context in which such books ended up being made all wrong – as it turns out (why am I surprised/disappointed by this?). As we soon learn following Megan Rosenbloom, a medical archivist who works with a group devoted to testing alleged anthropodermic books for authenticity and working to understand their stories – these books generally seem to have a direct relationship with the medical establishment rather than Hannibal Lecter types.
First of all, Rosenbloom’s writing is both very clear and engaging, making this book a breeze to read. She is clearly passionate about her topic, and wants to make accessible to anyone curious enough – and I think she succeeds in doing that! She also wants to get rid of the common misconceptions that exist regarding anthropodermic books: rumours about French Revolution and Nazi death camp human books manufactures turn out to be just that – rumors. The real stuff has much stranger and more complicated stories than one could expect.
It must also be noted that she navigates an ethically tricky terrain: of course, the idea that some people would use human skin to bind books is horrifying, and she takes great pain to gives us context, not to exonerate the doctors who did (whatever their motives), but to illustrate the value of such books as artefacts and important learning opportunities in regard to how medical science treats humans. I learned a few things reading her summary of the birth of modern medical training and how it resulted in what is commonly known as the clinical gaze.
As a very tattooed lady, I also found her chapter on tattoo preservation and the interesting work being done with this aim, quite interesting. I’m not sure what I’d like done with my ink once I’ve kicked the bucket, but now I certainly have stuff to think about and add to my death-plan (more paperwork, yay!).
Book and history nerds with a penchant for the creepy will certainly find this a fascinating little book: I only wished she would have dwelled more on other rumored anthropodermic books in her final chapters on the French “market” of occult book collectors....more
John Langan is so freaking good at what it does that it’s almost annoying. He’s one of those authors who’s new books I’ll buy without having read evenJohn Langan is so freaking good at what it does that it’s almost annoying. He’s one of those authors who’s new books I’ll buy without having read even a single review, because I implicitly trust that I’ll love it, and “Children of the Fang” confirmed that my trust is well-deserved. Langan writes literary horror that is erudite and sophisticated, and I can’t get enough.
This most recent collection is best read with keeping the story notes at the end of the book in mind: for each story, Langan looks a which author, book or movie planted the seed that he nurtured and turned into a creepy tale. I’ll be honest: I prefer his longer stories, the ones where he really takes time to flesh out a world for his bizarre and macabre events to unfold, but do not discount the shorter stories, which are interesting muscle flexing and stylistic exercises. I especially loved the following titles:
“With Max Barry in the Nearer Precinct” “Into the Darkness, Fearlessly” “Children of the Fang” “Ymir” “The Horn of the World’s Ending” "The Underground Economy" "Inundation"
Even if this collection does not clear the bar set by “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and “The Fisherman” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) – which is still, in my opinion, one of the best horror novels ever written – it is still a treasure trove of creepy wonders that really shows of Langan's range, and also the eclectic muses he draws from. Obviously, the classics are there, but he is also a shamless fan and supporters of his friends and fellow writer Laird Barron and Stephen Graham Jones, and is not too proud to admit that their work is cross-polinating.
Also, perhaps bizarelly, Langan makes me fall in love with the Hudson River Valley, even if he uses it as a setting for haunting and scary creatures. The cover of his books should be Thoms Cole paintings - which I find to invoke a similar feeling of beautiful yet ominous landscape.
Highly recommended for fans of flavorful horror writing! ...more
Things I have learned about being a Queen while reading this excellent biography of Elizabeth I:
-The marriage question is tricky, but ultimately, not Things I have learned about being a Queen while reading this excellent biography of Elizabeth I:
-The marriage question is tricky, but ultimately, not getting married is the best call, because you make all your own decisions and drive your counsel up the wall by periodically pretending to be interested in marrying then changing your mind – which is just fun. -Brush your teeth. Seriously. -Nip conspiracies against your reign in the bud, or they will drag on for twenty years and cost you untold amounts of money, not to mention anxiety. Beheadings are messy, but alas, occasionally unavoidable. -Let people practice whatever religion they want. Even if its not the same as yours, your liberal attitude will make them less likely to be riled up by weird fanatics. Its not that important anyway. -Pirates are hot and know how to party. Make friends with them. -Dress the part, and never let anyone paint a bad portrait of you if you want to be a literal icon of your country’s history. -Get a good spymaster: he’ll save your bacon more times than you can count. -Let your subjects see you, walk among them, listen to them, talk to them. See previous point about them being less likely to get riled up and try to depose you.
Alison Weir wrote a wonderful book about the remarkable Elizabeth Tudor, humanized a lot of the famous stories and ideas about her and those close to her. I have always been fascinated with the image of this pale face, red-headed, outrageously dressed queen – who seemed to be the smartest person in the room wherever she went and who, while occasionally given to fits of rage, was a generally benevolent, peaceful and responsible monarch. I wondered if this job, of being England’s most famous queen, had been as lonely as it sometimes seemed, if she had had a good life, despite all the complications, intrigue and assassination attempts. She would not have liked this book, as it exposed some of her weaknesses, but personally, it made me like her more to know she gave ridiculous nicknames to her favorites, went out of her way to make her subjects feel cared for, and inspired life-long loyalty in those close to her.
This book is very well researched, the writing is engaging and never drags; Weir cares for her subject deeply, sharing quotes of personal correspondence and contemporary accounts of those who knew her, to reveal a very strong, extremely smart but also very human queen, who had an uneasy job in an uneasy time, and often had to make difficult decisions for herself and the country she was in charge of. Her parents’ legacy was a heavy burden, but she was determined to prove to everyone that she was worthy of her station.
If you are curious about Elizabeth, her reign or the time period and its politics, this is an excellent book. I’ll be looking for more works by Alison Weir....more
This short, beautifully written yet incredibly straightforward novel shocked everyone when it was published in France in thTeenage girls. I hate them.
This short, beautifully written yet incredibly straightforward novel shocked everyone when it was published in France in the 50s. It had been written by a woman still in her teens and spoke frankly and plainly of sex and atheism, the narrator’s voice detached and amoral. Now, it’s no longer shocking – it’s mostly sad, a quick glimpse into the selfish and decadent life of post-war upper class Parisians. The story could be melodramatic, but somehow, Sagan doesn’t allow that easy mistake to happen. It is much more a product of the literature of the era, unaffected and matter of fact. That she wrote it at 18 goes to show that teenage girls have always had a fascination for tragedies, but she had the brain and talent necessary to turn the tale of a disastrous summer vacation into a melancholy story about the discovery of the nature of love and its consequences.
A seventeen year old girl named Cécile, and her widowed father Raymond, go spend the summer in a villa by the sea on the Côté d’Azur. Raymond is a womanizer who has never bothered to hide his lifestyle from Cécile, and he brings along his younger mistress Elsa with them. Cécile meets a young law student named Cyril and begins a budding romance with him. This could have been a perfect summer if Cécile’s late mother’s friend Anne had not decided to join them…
Anne is everything Elsa is not: she is very cerebral, she has a career, she is divorced and independent - she is very "comme il faut", respectable. Cécile at first can’t believe that Anne and her father would be interested in each other, but lo and behold, not only do they get together, but they quickly announce their engagement. Cécile, resentful to find that Anne won’t tolerate her indolent and spoiled lifestyle any longer, hatches a cruel plan to separate her from her father, by manipulating both Elsa and Cyril.
This book does not have a happy ending, and made me think both of Duras and Camus in the resigned attitude of their conclusion. One is tempted to close this book, raise a glass of wine and sadly toast: “C’est la vie!”.
The prose is gorgeous, vivid and quite sensual. If you can tolerate terrible teenage girls, this is absolutely worth a few hours....more
This graphic novel had been on my radar for a while, but after reading "The Unwomanly Face of War" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I got eThis graphic novel had been on my radar for a while, but after reading "The Unwomanly Face of War" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I got even more curious. I haven't read anything else by Garth Ennis, but I've heard enough about "Preacher" and "The Boys" to know this wouldn't be a story featuring baskets of puppies...
Sara is part of a battalion of women snipers who defend the line during the second winter of the Nazi occupation of Russia. Her colleagues are good, but she is especially good: driven by the horrible fate that befell her native village and blessed with a great stillness, she is so deadly that even the Germans have heard of her.
I'm very glad that Ennis chose to highlight a lesser known aspect of the war, and while I'm not sure he based his story on any one specific historical account, he clearly did his homework, and this book is really a masterful character study, set against a bleak and brutal background. Epting's artwork is beautiful, his characters' face incredibly expressive and his gory bits just bloody enough.
An excellent graphic novel, especially if you are interested in WWII stories and/or Russian and Soviet history. Highly recommended....more
I don’t use the expression “yas, queen” because as a geriatric millennial, it seems forced; but if I did use it, I would have used it a lot reading thI don’t use the expression “yas, queen” because as a geriatric millennial, it seems forced; but if I did use it, I would have used it a lot reading this wonderful little book.
I absolutely loved ”Every Body Yoga” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), so it goes without saying that as soon as Jessamyn Stanley’s new book was available, I made sure to get a copy ASAP.
Just so we are clear, this is not a how-to yoga book, but rather a collection of essays about Jessamyn’s relationship to yoga and to those things that are connected to it, and about the constant balancing art that is being a human being on this fucked up planet. If you’ve read her previous book, you know she curses, that she’s hilarious and brutally honest, and she remains so in this book as well. A quick glance at other reviews and at a few articles that mention this book shows that she ruffled some feathers – and I am glad she did.
The entire book is wonderful, but I was especially happy to read her chapter called “Wealth and Other American Values”, and that she seems to have coined the brilliant expression “yoga industrial complex” to describe the aggressive commodification of yoga in America (I use the word in the continental sense, to include Canada). She perfectly articulated why I have very mixed feelings about yoga classes, people who post their practice incessantly on Instagram and the possibility of doing a yoga teacher training myself. The fundamental nature of social media being performative, it is in very sharp opposition to the nature of yoga, which is self-reflective, so the combination ends up feeling, well, gross. It’s nice to see it expressed by someone else, it made me feel a little less insane. And while we have wildly different life experiences, I have been in similar positions of asking “spiritual” teachers questions they’d rather I hadn’t brought up and leaving a room feeling like an impostor, simply because I wasn’t nodding along with everyone else. I really appreciated her thoughts about teachers and how they continue to teach us even when we are not in direct contact with them anymore.
Other stand-out chapters were those on the poses, cultural appropriation, white guilt and meditation. Her chapter on smoking weed seems to have been especially annoying to some, and I can see why, but as someone for whom prescription anti-anxiety drugs do nothing, but half a joint keeps the panic attacks away, you’ll forgive me for taking her side on that one – even if I don’t use it within my yoga practice.
Inspiring, down to earth, funny, moving and very necessary, anyone interested in yoga beyond the physical practice should take a look at this book, as it is riotously uplifting and very honest. I wish more people were as honest and open as she is....more
Let’s get it out of the way: I am a fairly shameless Loki fan-girl, whether it’s from Norse mythology or MCU, he’s my man. Or you know, whatever. If yLet’s get it out of the way: I am a fairly shameless Loki fan-girl, whether it’s from Norse mythology or MCU, he’s my man. Or you know, whatever. If you watched the Disney+ series and are not over it and wanting more, this lovely collected edition of the “Agent of Asgard” series is for you!
First, of all, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how layered this collection turned out to be: I figured at first that this might be a simple attempt by Marvel to cash in on the huge fan-base the character ended up gathering, but there is substance to this story, and more coherence than I have come to expect from mainstream comic books. This story is an interesting reflection here on what makes characters good or bad, and on their capacity to change.
Loki wants to turn the page. He doesn't want to grow into the old, evil version of himself who has been pulling the strings for a long time. But change is not easy, and it requires support - something that is not easy to come by when you've spend your entire existence being notoriously treacherous. In order to redeem himself, he puts his wit at the service of Asgardia's rulers, the All-Mother. He will work as their agent across the nine realms, slowly earn their trust and become a trusted and honorable Asgardian... But of course, it can't be that simple or straight-forward. Loki may want to be a good guy, but he is still Loki, and that involves a natural tendency to be, well... tricky and hard to trust.
I loved this struggle, this honest and painful attempt at breaking free from the script that everyone constantly imposes on him: I wouldn't be surprised if the writers of the Disney+ show had been fans of this collection, as it runs along similar lines in some respects. I also loved Verity: what better foil for the Father of Lies than a human lie-detector? The fact that she is a pink-haired, bespectacled and extensively tattooed nerd makes her extra-endearing as far as I am concerned...
The artwork is beautiful through all 17 issues, the characters beautifully rendered and expressive. It is definitely a must-have for Loki fans, but for fans of good, meta story-telling as well.
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I accidentally read things in the wrong order all the time, and this is exactly what happened here: for the record, if you are interested in these comics, read “Agent of Asgard” before “The God Who Fell to Earth” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). There, PSA done!...more
Oh, she is a very clever one, Ms. Valente, very clever indeed!
“Comfort Me With Apples” is her version of the (view spoiler)[Garden of Eden/Bluebeard (Oh, she is a very clever one, Ms. Valente, very clever indeed!
“Comfort Me With Apples” is her version of the (view spoiler)[Garden of Eden/Bluebeard (hide spoiler)] – not two stories I would have thought to blend together, but she is very, very clever. At just a hair over 100 pages, it is a very quick read that is quite worth the time: as usual, her poetic gift makes her prose dense with sensation, vivid colors, textures and tastes.
Sophia lives with her husband in a gated community, and everything in her life is perfect. She lives according to the rather strict rules outlined by the home owners’ association contract, spends time with her neighbors, prepares food, shops at the lovely stores. Everything is perfect. But is it?...
Her husband doesn’t always come home at night – a home which seems disproportionally huge for Sophia. And soon she begins to find odd things around her perfect love nest, things that hint at horrors she can barely imagine. Who is her husband? What happened in this house?
I’m starting to think that the novella is the perfect format for Valente: room to stretch and to built a world and characters tantalizing enough to hook the reader, but not enough so that she begins to meander and looses focus. I think she has been getting better and better over time, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll come up with next. Now I’m craving apple pie… Well done, Cat!...more
A companion novel to the delightful "The Pursuit of Love" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), "Love in a Cold Climate" reunited me with Fanny'A companion novel to the delightful "The Pursuit of Love" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), "Love in a Cold Climate" reunited me with Fanny's witty voice, with Uncle Matthew's teeth gnashing and Uncle Davey's ridiculous dieting, but while my dear Linda Radlett was mentioned from time to time, I'm afraid her absence took the shine off this installment of Mitford's silly and fun Oxfordshire chronicles.
"Love in a Cold Climate" focuses on a family who reside in the same region as the Radletts, the Montdore: the jewel in that family's crown in Polly, a radiant young woman, who despite her good looks and excellent pedigree, refuses to fall in love and get married, to her mother's never-ending frustration. No one can quite seem to understand why she can't form an attachment, until she picks the most scandalous possible match, her recently widowed uncle-by-marriage, and is disinherited by her parents. The void she leaves in their lives, however, will soon be filled by the arrival of a distant relative who is to inherit their estate now that Polly has been written out of the will, the dashing Cedric. As this story unfolds, Fanny gets married and begins her life as a young wife and mother in Oxford.
Charming and witty as it is, the fact that Polly and Cedric both grated my nerves made this a less enjoyable read for me than "The Pursuit of Love"; I had all but fallen in love with Linda, and while both stories occur around the same time (her marriage to Tony Kroesig is referred to a few times), she is only part of this story as an anecdote - and Lord Merlin is only briefly mentioned!
Still there is something irresistible about the gossipy nature of Mitford's stories, her hilarious descriptions of the eccentric characters who may or may not be based on real people (wink wink) and sharp commentary about the silly vacuousness of the landed gentry.
Sweet and entertaining, but a little thinner than its predecessor....more
"With every fly that one carelessly swats and crushes, the entire world comes to and end. In the refracting eye of a little fly it is the same as if t"With every fly that one carelessly swats and crushes, the entire world comes to and end. In the refracting eye of a little fly it is the same as if the end of the world had destroyed all life."
I think that the story of Rosa Luxemburg is criminally unknown. Sure, people interested in history and in socialism know her name, but when one thinks of socialist revolution, the names of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky are usually the ones that come to people's mind. Her life and her work is not part of so-called common knowledge. I truly hope books like this one change that, because the story of this tiny yet monumental woman is both very important and incredibly inspiring.
Kate Evans did a wonderful job of putting Dr. Luxemburg's life on the page, perhaps more in a introductory way than one might wish, but nevertheless, this gorgeous graphic biography is the perfect way to get to know Rosa Luxemburg.
Born in Poland in 1871, little Rosa had a lot of odds stacked against her: she was a girl, she was Jewish and one of her legs was significantly shorter than the other, leaving her with a permanent limp and obligation to wear thick soled shoes her entire life. But Rosa had a very strong will and mind, and she never let anything stand in her way. She read constantly, to feed her intellect, but she also couldn't help but notice the class discrepancy she saw in her school and in the streets of Warsaw. At 15, she joined the socialist movement and eventually moved to Zurich, where she was allowed not only to attend university, but also earned a doctorate. She relocated again, this time to Berlin, where she continued her work to bring about a revolution that would make a better world not just for the workers, but for everyone. She was jailed more than once for speaking against the monarchy and other powers in place, other members of the socialist organizations with which she worked tried to push her around, but she never gave up the purity of her principles: equality and peace for all. Even when holding on to her integrity led to her death...
I want all little girls to hear about Rosa - little boys too, so they never underestimate girls who are smaller than them. And I want grown ups to know about her as well, so that we can all remember than the actions of one tiny person can sometimes move the needle of history and not underestimate the power of our voice and actions.
I had a few low days a couple weeks ago, and on a whim, I downloaded the new BBC adaptation of “The Pursuit of Love”, starring the ever-adorable Lily I had a few low days a couple weeks ago, and on a whim, I downloaded the new BBC adaptation of “The Pursuit of Love”, starring the ever-adorable Lily James, and I am happy to report that it was just the pick-me-up I needed (and I adored the anachronistic soundtrack!). Funny, silly, romantic and tender, it’s just a romantic comedy on the surface. But just underneath that, it’s a story about the importance of friendship and also about how difficult, confusing and frustrating love can be. It also takes not-so-gentle jabs at the way the upper middle class behaved during the inter-war era, and stomps joyfully on the stereotype of sexless Englishness. I happened to find a copy of a collection of three novels by Nancy Mitford and cracked it open as soon as I got it home. I wanted a larger dose of that effervescent story-telling.
I wondered, as I read, how I would have reacted to this book had I read it when I was much younger. Being way past the “Bolter” phase of my life, it makes me smile and think of past misadventures with a little wistfulness – but I imagine that at 15 or 16, I would have wanted to be Linda so bad. Maybe it’s better for everyone that I read it at 36 instead…
"The Pursuit of Love", in case you didn't know, is the story of a girl with wildly romantic ideas who wants a great love story, like the one she’s read about in books, and who, not unlike Emma Bovary, is often disappointed in this quest. But she has more pluck than Emma, and she carries on despite her disappointments. Beware of spoilers from here on.
Linda has an eccentric upbringing in a large Oxfordshire estate, ruled over by a belligerent father and a slightly checked-out mother, with a whole brood of siblings who can't wait to get away. Her best friend and confident is her cousin Fanny, our narrator. Fanny's mother, known simply as The Bolter (as she bolts from one marriage to another - and I love that they never even call her by her name, and simply address her as Bolter) is largely absent, but her shadow and reputation hang over Linda, who ends up on a path not that different from her aunt's.
She marries the first man she falls in love with, the arrogant and borish Tory Tony, with whom she has a child she can't stand. She eventually leaves him for Christian, an ardent Communist who struggles with his affection for her, as his mind is constantly on the welfare of People in general. After following him to help out with the Spanish Civil War refugees in the South of France, she realizes he will never love her the way her romantic nature demands, and decides to go home. But on her way to London, she will meet the aloof but irresistible Fabrice de Sauveterre...
I was very struck by the hilariously inadequate upbringing all the Radlett children are put through. No wonder none of them ever make a single reasonable decision about their lives! And as written with Mitford's sparkling wit, all the supporting characters are wonderfully endearing: I loved crazy Uncle Matthew, eccentric Lord Merlin and hypochondriac Davey so much! Their quirks make them seem larger than life, but they also feel quite real: knowing what we know about the real life of the Mitford clan, I suspect they are based on very real relatives of Nancy's...
This book is like one of those adorable little mini bottles of champagne: it's a delight you can almost swallow in one gulp and it will leave you giddy and wanting more. I adored it, and I suspect I will pick it up again next time I crave a quick shot of loveliness....more
1997 and 1998 were very rough years: my parents divorced in the spring of 97 and my beloved grandfather passed away in January 98. Through all this, I1997 and 1998 were very rough years: my parents divorced in the spring of 97 and my beloved grandfather passed away in January 98. Through all this, I also remember all the headlines about Princess Diana’s death. I was thirteen, and while a lot of the implications of her death eluded me at the time, one thing was glaringly obvious: this was not what was supposed to happen to princesses. A lifetime of exposure to pop culture had told me princesses marry princes, make little princes and princesses of their own, and then live happily ever after. The prince is not supposed to cheat on them with horsey-faced randos and then the princesses are certainly not supposed to die in car crashes when they are in the prime of their lives. Her death was clear evidence that pop culture had lied to me. That was all a lot of stuff for my poor adolescent brain to process. If people could divorce and die, how the hell was I supposed to know that things would be OK? You know, normal teenage existentialist angst.
I admit I then stopped thinking about Diana for many years; until I watched the amazing movie “The Queen”, and while I did not become a royal watcher, I started to think about the royal family as something morbidly fascinating: these people’s lives are very, very weird, and anyone who expect them to be normal and well-adjusted is delusional. I became intrigued by their stories the way one gets interested in goofy social experiments. You know: put people in a box, give them so much wealth and privilege, but give them a rigid code by which they must live which takes no account of what life is like outside the box, and monitor their stress levels. Of course, as soon as Netflix released “The Crown”, I was hooked. After the last season, I watched a documentary specifically about Diana, which finally led me to this book. I picked it because Sarah Bradford is interviewed in “The Story of Diana”, and reviews of the book seem to agree that this is as balanced a biography of the infamous princess as one is likely to find. Good enough for me!
And indeed, I appreciate that Bradford took care to present multiple accounts of certain events, to try and see which anecdotes were exaggerated or dramatized and which were reported in a more grounded fashion. But the bottom line remains the same, hysterics or not: two emotionally immature people raised in psychologically damaging households had a marriage that was doomed from the very start. Sprinkle an excess of publicity about it and no privacy whatsoever, and you get the perfect storm that was Diana’s life.
Bradford works hard to untangle Diana’s own account of her life and all the testimonials from friends, relatives and staff, and offers readers the portrait of a vulnerable, romantic and painfully uninformed young woman who was forced to transition from girl into woman without much support from anyone, in great solitude. And as soon as she found something she was good at, her husband’s jealousy and resentment escalated the tensions that had existed in their shared life from the very beginning. As we all know, she eventually managed to escape the royal life, but paid for her freedom very dearly.
I was chagrined really, to read about these two people being so horribly unhappy, and making a bad situation worse by behaving childishly. But thanks to the balanced research informing this book, I also felt both compassion and irritation towards Diana and Charles. If this book is to be believed, “The Crown” did not hit very far off the mark in it’s representation of their marriage, so its a mix of sad and cringey. I was astonished to learn that Diana was basically left to her own devices so soon after her wedding, with no clear idea of her role, what she should be doing or what her position meant – which considering the amount of staff and courtiers running around Buckingham, seems like a strange oversight… Surely, someone could have briefed her. And it is pretty heart-breaking to think that regardless of what he did or said, she still carried a candle for Charles even after their divorce.
It is wild for me to think that I am now the same age she was when she died. Sure, she had many bad sides, from her dramatic imagination to her pettiness, but she walked a rather rocky road, and after reading this book, I believe she tried to walk it as best and as gracefully as she knew how. A good biography, engagingly written and well-balanced; very recommended if you are curious about Diana’s life. I docked a star because I got the feeling that the author expects the readers to already know who people like Aleister Campbell are, which is not necessarily the case, and a few footnotes might have made some references easier to navigate....more
I am a sucker for a space Western: maybe it’s having been brought up on “Star Wars”, but I can’t really resist the idea of scrapy misfits ganging up tI am a sucker for a space Western: maybe it’s having been brought up on “Star Wars”, but I can’t really resist the idea of scrapy misfits ganging up together to fight a big evil galactic army, so obviously, I placed a pre-order for “Ten Low” as soon as I read the synopsis and saw the great retro-futurist cover art.
Ten Low is a former army-medic, who is hiding from her past on a backwater moon. But old habits die hard, and when she sees a ship crashing, her instinct to rescue survivors is stronger than her urge to hide, and she saves the life of what appears to be a young girl. But this young girl is actually a genetically modified super-solider, General Gabriella Ortiz, and her crash was not exactly an accident… From there on, buckle your seatbelt, because it's pew-pew-pew in space desert, combined with weird psychic connection between our heroine and other enigmatic characters, which is awesome!
Fast-paced and action-packed, “Ten Low” is a fantastic space Western – but the comparison to “Firefly” and “Dune” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) are, in my humble opinion, a little off the mark… Sure, it takes place on a desert planet and there are lots of back-stabbing and political manoeuvring, just like “Dune”, but the world building and character development does not get the same rich treatment we get in Herbert’s masterpiece. In fact, an extra hundred page or so, to give the readers a chance to get a real feel for the world, and to get to know the characters a bit better, would have made this very fun book much more satisfying. And yes, there is the Old West vibe that made “Firefly” delightful, with the taverns, ships referred to as “mules” and “wagons”, and strange beings that live in the sand and pick bodies clean and its spooky. But “Firefly”’s strength was also the spirit of camaraderie between it’s scrapy yet wholesome characters, and I think that Holborn was going for something much grittier than that with this book.
To be sure, this is a super fun read, which was an interesting change of pace from the more philosophical sci-fi I had been reading this month, and if you are looking for a wild space ride, this is great! I think I was just hungering for a slightly bigger scope than what I got....more
Gabrielle (Reading Rampage)
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