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B019O03IUU
| 3.62
| 17,091
| Jul 12, 2016
| Jul 14, 2016
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it was ok
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Dystopian novels that aren't strictly SFF – that splice their post-apocalyptic setting with some other genre or style – are becoming A Thing, a trend
Dystopian novels that aren't strictly SFF – that splice their post-apocalyptic setting with some other genre or style – are becoming A Thing, a trend maybe not as pervasive as The Post-Gone Girl Thriller, but a trend all the same. It's hard for me not to attribute this at least partly to Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, though my impression of that book's significance is likely magnified by my love for it. Station Eleven is my dystopian benchmark, and it looks like the publishers of The Last One might agree, since they mention it in the blurb. The Last One is a billed as a thriller, and it has the bright idea of placing into its imperilled setting a group of reality TV contestants who, of course, don't necessarily know what's going on in the outside world while they're filming. There are dual narratives, recounted in alternate chapters and probably best summed up as Before and After. Before is about the show, In the Dark, itself, and follows the progression of its storyline from the first day of filming onwards. After is about one of the contestants, a woman dubbed Zoo (because she works at a wildlife sanctuary; they're all given nicknames like this, mostly occupation-based – Engineer, Biology, Waitress and so on). She is living and hunting alone, believing herself to still be competing in the show as part of a lengthy solo survival task, while the reader is given heavy hints that the ravaged, post-apocalyptic landscape she's traversing is the result of a real pandemic, and the crew, other contestants, and indeed the viewers are most likely long gone. Reality TV makes an exciting subject for fiction because an omniscient perspective allows us to see it from all sides: the contestants' actual experiences; how they are interpreted and analysed, controlled and edited by the producers; how the end product is consumed by viewers and the media. The topic has been tackled to wonderful effect in a couple of pieces of short fiction I've read – Rebecca Makkai's 'The November Story', from her collection Music for Wartime, and Jonathan Coe's 'The Comeback', a segment of Number 11 – and it's one of the strongest elements of The Last One. The construction of the show is fascinating; the disconnect between screen and behind-the-scenes also gives the book its compelling opening chapter. Probably the biggest problem I had with The Last One was Zoo herself. She's meant to be charismatic and likeable enough that she's pegged as a 'fan favourite' by the show's producers, but none of this comes across in her depiction from any perspective – she's almost cartoonishly self-obsessed, myopic (in more ways than one (her actual short-sightedness is made into a linchpin of the plot)) and singularly dull. Her supposed reason for competing doesn't gel with the idea that she would keep going as long as she does; her arc is as unbelievable as she is unsympathetic. I longed for another character's viewpoint – or just something, anything, good or bad, to make Zoo interesting. The worldbuilding, too, is shallow; the fact that this is lampshaded (Zoo comments that Brennan's ramblings resemble 'every post-apocalypse plot, ever') doesn't make it any better. What The Last One has going for it is that it's very gripping. The fact that I finished it at all, despite not much liking the plot or main character, attests to that. I'm sorry I didn't enjoy it more – I guess I kept hoping the ending would have something that would lift my opinion of everything else. (view spoiler)[I wondered whether all of this WAS part of the game show after all – or maybe I was supposed to hate Zoo, and she'd get a satisfyingly unhappy ending. Instead, there's just the saccharine promise that she and her surprise-not-dead husband will find each other. Ugh. (hide spoiler)] I received an advance review copy of The Last One from the publisher through NetGalley. ...more |
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1
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Mar 18, 2016
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Mar 19, 2016
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Jan 16, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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B013NI7V9S
| 3.55
| 2,677
| Dec 28, 2012
| May 24, 2016
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really liked it
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In a non-specific Middle Eastern setting, life in a city is governed by 'the Gate', both an actual structure and a symbol of authoritarian rule. Citiz
In a non-specific Middle Eastern setting, life in a city is governed by 'the Gate', both an actual structure and a symbol of authoritarian rule. Citizens are instructed to queue outside it for permits and certificates for everything from job applications to medical treatment. The Gate, however, never opens – it's often rumoured that it's about to, but all that happens is that more new laws are imposed; the queue grows longer and starts to turn into a permanent fixture. All this takes place in the aftermath of a failed uprising, always referred to as 'the Disgraceful Events'. As with many things in this story, the absurd moniker is amusing but also grating, and these effects are only amplified as it echoes through the text. There's an almost bewilderingly large cast of characters, some of whom are given names, while others are simply defined by a single feature throughout the narrative ('the man in the galabeya', 'the woman with short hair'). The dominant thread is about a man named Yehya who needs a special permit for an operation to remove the bullet lodged in his pelvis; while his health declines, the Gate issues an edict effectively declaring bullets nonexistent. Over and over, Yehya and the others return to the queue. Frustrating repetitiveness is a deliberate feature of the way the story is told, underscoring the bureaucratic hell the characters have to put themselves through day after day. In The Queue, we see the many different ways in which authoritarianism might undermine and, ultimately, destroy an individual. Rebels and conformists alike are subsumed by the regime. One particularly disturbing example is Yehya's friend Amani, whose efforts to track down a missing X-ray result in a punishment so nightmarish it rubs out her identity, leaving a blank slate who parrots Gate slogans. Amani's ordeal is the most powerful sequence in the book; the aftermath is a devastating portrait of the effects of trauma. The Queue ends not with a bang but with a downbeat sigh. It's a simultaneously farcical and believable portrait of life under autocratic rule, with tiny glimmers of hope as a community forms within the queue. TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr ...more |
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1
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May 09, 2017
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May 11, 2017
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Jan 16, 2016
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B0DWTQTHF4
| 4.16
| 325,770
| Oct 06, 2015
| Oct 06, 2015
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 06, 2015
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Oct 06, 2015
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Oct 07, 2015
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ebook
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0356506088
| 9780356506081
| B00YN3DZXO
| 3.58
| 4,425
| Jul 07, 2015
| Jul 07, 2015
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really liked it
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(3.5) There’s a lot going on in this novel about artificial intelligence, which switches between six voices. We have a teenage girl who’s distraught a
(3.5) There’s a lot going on in this novel about artificial intelligence, which switches between six voices. We have a teenage girl who’s distraught after losing her AI companion, known as a ‘babybot’; the voice of one of the bots, on its way to be destroyed; and the prison memoir of the man who invented them. There are also narratives belonging to the programmers who worked on the AI in the 1960s; the real-life computer scientist Alan Turing, writing letters about his idea of a machine that can learn; and the diary of a young woman in the 17th century. (If you’re wondering what the last one is doing in a sci-fi novel, it’s one of the things the AI is trained on.) In fact, you could say that there’s too much happening in Speak, but I have a weakness for this kind of fragmented narrative, and the different threads are balanced well. It never quite feels like you get to spend enough time with each narrator. Sometimes this is a blessing: I did not want to read any more about Karl fucking Dettman (I haven’t hated a fictional character so much in quite some time). Sometimes it’s a curse: I was fascinated by Gaby’s chat transcripts and Mary’s diary, and would have loved more of both. Either way, this approach means Speak possesses a momentum that’s difficult to resist. Though I’m not sure I’ll remember the story for years to come, it held my attention, and sometimes that’s all you need. TinyLetter | Linktree ...more |
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1
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Jul 13, 2022
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Jul 17, 2022
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Sep 16, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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B00WE7Q47K
| 3.73
| 36,714
| Jul 02, 2015
| Apr 2021
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liked it
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I first sampled The Watchmaker of Filigree Street for my now-defunct blog back in 2015 (I did a series of posts where I read the first few chapters of
I first sampled The Watchmaker of Filigree Street for my now-defunct blog back in 2015 (I did a series of posts where I read the first few chapters of a variety of books, deciding on that basis whether I definitely wanted to read them, definitely didn’t, or was undecided. This fell into the latter category). I picked it up again after falling head over heels for Natasha Pulley’s latest novel, The Kingdoms. I jumped into it expecting the same intoxicating cocktail of expert worldbuilding, fascinating characters and heartrending releationships – which was a bit silly, really; this was a debut, and Pulley has clearly honed her craft since it was written. As in The Kingdoms, the emotional climax, when it comes, is powerful. But it takes most of the book to get there, with a lot of diversions. I read the ebook and was surprised to find out the print version is under 350 pages – it feels much longer. So I won’t be reading the sequel, but I still consider myself a fan of Pulley’s work and will get round to
The Bedlam Stacks
at some point. TinyLetter | Linktree ...more |
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1
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Apr 25, 2021
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Apr 30, 2021
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Jul 10, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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1618730304
| 9781618730305
| 1618730304
| 3.93
| 573
| Nov 05, 2012
| Nov 13, 2012
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really liked it
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When I started the first story, 'The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon', I thought I knew what I was getting. The protagonist, Robbie, begins by
When I started the first story, 'The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon', I thought I knew what I was getting. The protagonist, Robbie, begins by reminiscing about his first job, as a security guard at a museum of aviation, and remembering a particular gallery in which a projection of a disembodied head was the main attraction. But the narrative quickly moves away from the obvious creepy angle here and instead weaves a detailed and character-driven tale around Robbie and two of his ex-colleagues; it's certainly uncanny, but evasive about exactly how. The characters – like most of the characters in most of the stories collected here – are middle-aged, not inclined to fantastical speculation, and many of the most effective moments are touching rather than unnerving. 'The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon' is unusually lengthy for the first story in an anthology, almost a novella in itself, and it sets the tone for a collection in which the 'strange' is often not what you expect it to be, and the longest stories are the most rewarding and surprising. 'Winter's Wife' is told by a boy whose neighbour, the eccentric Winter, suddenly brings home an inscrutable young Icelandic woman as his wife. Winter meets her on the internet, and our narrator thinks she looks like Björk – it's these humanising touches that make Hand's stories so effective; we identify ourselves in the backdrops, if not the mysterious cloud of hummingbirds in the forest, or the character with an apparent ability to bend nature to her will. 'Uncle Lou' spends so much time establishing the relationship between the main characters, a woman and her flamboyant uncle, that the ending has powerful emotional clout, despite taking a real turn for the fantastic. The brief 'Cruel Up North' is memorable chiefly because it doesn't explain its mysteries – what, for example, might the 'lava fields' be? There are missteps – or, at least, some stories are weaker than others. 'Hungerford Bridge' – a short scene in which an old friend introduces the narrator to a fantastic creature – feels too thin against the richness of many of the other tales; 'The Far Shore' contains some beautiful moments but goes in a predictable direction, the opposite of the clever feints performed by the strongest stories here; and 'The Return of the Fire Witch' is an oddity, the one slice of high fantasy among a set of what might otherwise, per the subtitle, be termed 'strange stories' in the Robert Aickman sense. But the jewel in Errantry's crown is 'Near Zennor', a flawless work of art that has to be one of the best short stories (strange or otherwise) I've ever read. It starts with a discovery: Jeffrey, a 'noted architect', is organising clutter belonging to his late wife, Anthea, when he finds a tin containing a bundle of letters and a cheap locket. The letters are in Anthea's hand, all returned to sender; when he investigates the recipient, Robert Bennington, he discovers the man was a children's author later vilified as a paedophile. Disturbed by references to a meeting between Anthea and Robert, and tortured by the idea that she could have been a victim of abuse she never told him about, he journeys to her native England to meet with one of her childhood friends. There, he hears a story that will lead him on a journey through the places of Anthea's past; to Padwithiel farm, near Zennor, and to Bennington's abandoned home. Everything about 'Near Zennor' is absolutely pitch-perfect. The Cornish landscape is lovingly described; there is a true sense of reverence, and an awareness of the power – and menace – of nature runs throughout the whole story. The revelations about Bennington's crimes and reminders of his pariah status mean there's also an underlying current of real horror that has nothing to do with unexplained phenomena. Hand captures the force of a disquieting experience endured in childhood, how the memory can magnify it, give it the status of a legend. Jeffrey's ordeal at Golovenna Farm induces pure terror without resorting to anything as prosaic as an explanation. And there is a final twist that is shocking, and almost grimly funny, but not histrionic. All in all, it achieves the strange, wonderful duality of feeling perfect and complete but also leaving you wanting more, and more, and more, and it feels so real that I was tempted to google Bennington's Sun Battles books and the Cliff Cottage B&B. (This short interview with Hand gives some fascinating context – not just the fact that she deliberately set out to write an Aickmanesque story (an aim at which, in my opinion, she has absolutely succeeded) but that the three girls' peculiar adventure was, in fact, based on an inexplicable childhood memory of her own.) 'Near Zennor' is the second story in the book, and after finishing it, I had to take a break – to absorb its greatness, and because I was so sure nothing else could even begin to live up to it, I wasn't sure I wanted to read on. It's one of those stories that's so good, it's worth buying the whole book for it alone. Errantry is a strong, unpredictable collection of stories, but 'Near Zennor' is a masterpiece. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 14, 2016
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Jun 15, 2016
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Jul 01, 2015
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Paperback
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0571296793
| 9780571296798
| B00UQYHMIS
| 3.42
| 2,499
| 2012
| Jun 02, 2015
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liked it
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A 'haunting supernatural thriller' translated from Swedish, Stallo traces the connections between two events: the disappearance of a boy from a woodla
A 'haunting supernatural thriller' translated from Swedish, Stallo traces the connections between two events: the disappearance of a boy from a woodland cabin in 1978, and the possible sighting of a troll in a small town, 25 years later. The latter is investigated by Susso, the creator of a website dedicated to supposedly mythical beings: her father, a wildlife photographer, once took a picture of a strange creature which has entered family lore and sparked her obsession. With her mother Gudrun and ex-boyfriend Torbjörn in tow, Susso sets off on what turns out to be an epic adventure - apparently traversing the entirety of Sweden - to chase down the truth about the 'troll', a mission that suddenly becomes crucial when another boy goes missing in the town where it was spotted. Another narrative follows a man called Seved, although it's rather difficult to discuss the details of his part of the story without giving away exactly where it goes. While very intrigued by the themes and the whole idea of this story, I'm afraid I found it rather a hard slog. Stallo suffers from the simple fact that it lays its cards on the table way too early: (view spoiler)[it's revealed very quickly that trolls and other 'mythical' creatures are real in this world, so the cover tagline of 'what if there really is something out there?' isn't really a question. (hide spoiler)] There are also so many characters it's difficult to keep them straight. Aside from Seved, Signe and Mattias, I have to admit I had no clue who anyone in the troll house was. And don't get me started on the amount of names/words/phrases used to describe the various magical creatures; even by the end of the book I wasn't sure if they were all the same thing or several different 'species'. On the plus side, I did find the structure of the book enjoyable, with the main trio chasing clues, travelling from place to place meeting various people who help them, etc - it's old-fashioned and curiously reassuring. And I liked Susso and Gudrun: they were surprisingly ordinary heroines for this sort of novel. I never feel very confident in talking about the quality of the translation in a translated novel, because unless I can also read it in the original language, how would I know which one is at fault? But the cover of this edition is plastered with a big quote from Karl Ove Knausgård about how the 'words seem to sparkle on the page', so I kind of feel like it probably is the translation that's the problem here. Far from being sparkling, the writing seems dull and turgid and adds to the feeling that the story is dragging on for too long. In places, it just seems plain wrong, or at least odd - the word 'object' repeatedly being used to refer to an animal particularly stood out to me. I don't know if it's because most Scandinavian books I've read have been part of some series or another, but - despite its length - Stallo feels like it's the beginning of something, not necessarily a complete story in itself. There's a moment of sexual tension between Susso and Torbjörn that's never revisited, and the ending is very abrupt. I wonder if there'll be a second Susso investigation? I'm not sure I'd be interested in picking it up if there was. This was at least engaging and readable enough that I stuck with it for 600 pages, but all in all I think it's one of those books that tries to bridge the boundaries between literary and fantasy/horror fiction and ends up not being very good at either of them. ...more |
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1
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Apr 22, 2015
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Apr 28, 2015
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Apr 22, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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B0056A2ELM
| 3.29
| 496
| 1998
| Jul 14, 2011
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liked it
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While The Extremes doesn’t seem to be regarded as vintage Christopher Priest, I was drawn in by the fact that it revolves around virtual reality. I lo
While The Extremes doesn’t seem to be regarded as vintage Christopher Priest, I was drawn in by the fact that it revolves around virtual reality. I love a VR novel, for some reason – maybe because of a book I loved as a child called New World, of which The Extremes occasionally reminded me. It centres on Teresa, an FBI agent whose husband has recently died in a mass shooting. Trying to deal with her grief, she travels to the Sussex coastal town of Bulverton, where a similar shooting took place on the same day her husband was killed in Texas. Her investigation leads her to spend a lot of time in the immersive virtual world of ‘extreme experience’ (aka ExEx). It’s all very absorbing at the start, and meanders along pleasantly for a while... But I got a bit bored of all the digressions, especially when it becomes clear that many of the characters’ perspectives add nothing of value to the plot. I was particularly annoyed with the insipid way the relationship between two of them was wrapped up. The story also takes a rather weird turn into Teresa suddenly becoming obsessed with VR porn. All in all, a book featuring lots of intriguing and engaging elements that unfortunately becomes quite baffling towards the end. TinyLetter | Linktree ...more |
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1
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May 07, 2022
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May 09, 2022
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Dec 03, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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1848546548
| 9781848546547
| 1848546548
| 3.76
| 675
| Jun 04, 2015
| Jun 04, 2015
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liked it
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I loved the first book of Louise Welsh's Plauge Times trilogy, A Lovely Way To Burn, so this sequel was an automatic shoo-in for my Most Anticipated o
I loved the first book of Louise Welsh's Plauge Times trilogy, A Lovely Way To Burn, so this sequel was an automatic shoo-in for my Most Anticipated of 2015 list. I was mildly surprised, but still excited, to learn it would focus on a different character. A Lovely Way To Burn was all about gutsy TV presenter Stevie Flint; Death is a Welcome Guest is about a stand-up comedian, Magnus McFall. This one doesn't start where the last one left off. Instead it opens as the spread of the virus known as the Sweats, which we already know will eventually engulf the country (assuming 'we' read the first book of the trilogy), is in its early stages. Magnus is en route to a gig, as warm-up act to the obnoxious Johnny Dongo; an afflicted boy collapses onto the railway before the show. After a spat with Johnny, Magnus gets arrested - there's a convoluted scene involving him rescuing a girl from an ostentatiously nefarious would-be rapist who turns out (a bit implausibly) to be an MP, then being caught in the act by a gang of men who assume he's the girl's attacker - and finds himself imprisoned in an overflowing prison where both inmates and staff are dropping like flies. He forms a precarious alliance with Jeb, a long-term prisoner whose crimes are, for most of the book, unknown. Magnus's aim is to get back to his hometown on Orkney, where he's convinced he will find his family safe and well, and so the two set off on a potentially treacherous trek across the country. Then they meet a gun-toting military priest who presides over a community at crumbling Tanqueray House, and it all goes a bit 28 Days Later. Unlike A Lovely Way To Burn - which had me completely hooked from the outset - this story is really slow to get going. The prison riot is interminable, and totally lacking in suspense since, if Magnus and Jeb didn't escape, there'd be no story at all. At this point I was seriously worried I wasn't going to like the book; but once they're out of prison and on the road, it picks up. I've spent ages trying to work out whether this is objectively a better book than A Lovely Way To Burn. I think it probably is. It's less melodramatic; sure, it has a dramatic climax, but not quite the crazed, almost horror-movie-esque scenes of its predecessor. It's more contemplative and spends a greater amount of time delving into its main character's state of mind, examining the psychological implications of the virus - and, to some extent, the political fallout. (I should also mention that it can certainly be read as a standalone novel, although it perhaps has something in common with the second part of many trilogies in that much of the content feels like filler.) The best moments come towards the end, when all the tension that's been building throughout the story combines with the strange undercurrents in Tanqueray village and creates a lurid, horrible climax. It's telling that these scenes are probably the least believable in the book and yet they are the most emotionally compelling. While I loved Stevie, Magnus left me feeling indifferent. Because this story is less plot-driven, it sacrifices the great advantages of the first book's crime thriller structure - the brilliant tension, the need to know what would happen next, the clues and revelations leading the protagonist from one place, one person to the next. I had no real investment in Magnus's quest to get back to his family, because the narrative didn't want me to care about that. (view spoiler)[Sure enough, it ends up becoming a footnote - by the time Mangus reaches Orkney, both he and the reader know his family aren't going to be alive. (hide spoiler)] Jeb is a deliberately offputting character, the whole point being that he will end up a scapegoat and that the reader will be prompted to wonder what they'd do in Magnus's position, whether they'd bother to help him. But honestly, I didn't find this dilemma that interesting either. Death is a Welcome Guest is a good, solid read that does a decent job of advancing the story arc of the Plague Times trilogy. But I think perhaps it's more scene-setting for the final part than anything else. I'll definitely be reading the last installment, with the hope that it returns to the irresistible excitement of the first. ...more |
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1
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May 07, 2015
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May 13, 2015
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Nov 25, 2014
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Hardcover
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0007383290
| 9780007383290
| B004XOZ8B0
| 3.89
| 346,361
| 1984
| Apr 28, 2000
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really liked it
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A sprawling (how apt), colourful, cyberpunk dream-or-nightmare - I didn't always understand what was going on in Neuromancer, but I definitely enjoyed
A sprawling (how apt), colourful, cyberpunk dream-or-nightmare - I didn't always understand what was going on in Neuromancer, but I definitely enjoyed the ride. I'm sure it was partly the knowledge that it inspired The Matrix, and partly because I imagined the early parts in the novel in particular as looking Ghost in the Shell-ish, but it all felt very film-like, and reading the novel in what I think of as quite an old-fashioned way - a chapter or so every night before going to sleep - made me feel like I was escaping into a very vivid alternate world. The negative reviews I've read of this frequently pick apart the confusing language, but I found that once I'd got into the flow of it I could easily comprehend it without grasping every specific component of it - like reading something written in an unfamiliar regional dialect. It can also be really beautiful: Under bright ghosts burning through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, holograms of Wizard's Castle, Tank War Europa, the New York skyline... And now he remembered her that way, her face bathed in restless laser light, features reduced to a code: her cheekbones flaring scarlet as Wizard's Castle burned, forehead drenched with azure when Munich fell to the Tank War, mouth touched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon....more |
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1
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Aug 24, 2015
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Sep 03, 2015
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Nov 05, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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1846559162
| 9781846559167
| 1846559162
| 3.57
| 7,309
| Apr 23, 2015
| Apr 23, 2015
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really liked it
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As I said when I first sampled The Gracekeepers last September, I feared, at first, that it wasn't for me - that the fantastical premise was too whims
As I said when I first sampled The Gracekeepers last September, I feared, at first, that it wasn't for me - that the fantastical premise was too whimsical for my tastes and that it was in danger of being too twee. However, the first few chapters really surprised me. I was drawn straight into its world and wanted to read on; I found the characters easy to care about, and the story gave me the same cosy, magical feeling as Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. (Unlike many readers, I enjoyed that book, but as others won't necessarily find the comparison flattering, I will again add that Logan is a better writer. It's the atmosphere of the stories that's similar.) As with many good stories that appear to be whimsical, there is an undercurrent of darkness that adds spice and bite to a narrative that's often deceptively gentle. The setting is a waterlogged world in which there is a class division between landlockers, the lucky few with homes on dry land, and damplings, whose nomadic lives are spent at sea. There are two main characters: North, who resides on a circus boat and makes a living performing with her beloved bear, and Callanish, who lives alone on an island and works as a gracekeeper, tending the graves of those who die at sea. (The latter idea is expanded from a short story in Logan's debut collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales.) When a storm hits and tragedy strikes the Circus Excalibur, North and Callanish meet and are immediately drawn to each other; The Gracekeepers becomes a story about their connection, how they are inescapably drawn back to one another, and about how each is searching, in some way, for a family, for a home, for permanence. Many negative reviews are from readers frustrated that there wasn't more world-building, that certain things about how this society worked weren't fully explained - but I always saw it as more of a dreamlike landscape, one that wasn't necessarily supposed to feel entirely real. In my head, it didn't look anything like this world; instead, I imagined that beyond the seascapes we heard about, the water simply poured off the edge of the earth. Many reviews also assume the setting is post-apocalyptic or a version of our own future, but again I saw it differently, as an alternate world or alternate history, definitely magical; there's no actual magic, but you wouldn't be surprised to encounter it. Pre-flood society might well have been the world we know, or something very like it, but I felt that taking that for granted would reduce it to some cautionary tale about the environment, taking away all the enchantment. Enchantment is a very appropriate word for The Gracekeepers, perfect for the glamour of the circus, the ethereal imagery of Callanish's island home, and the magnetic draw of the central couple's attraction. The lush language of The Gracekeepers makes it a book to be savoured slowly, and it's best when measured out in small portions. If there was one thing about it I didn't like (and this became particularly noticeable whenever I read a big chunk of the book in one go) it was the repetition of certain words and phrases - I'd be quite happy to never see the word 'belly' again in my life, and Flitch calling Callanish 'little fish' drove me crazy (though, considering the general obnoxiousness of his character, I'm sure that was the point). Something a bit different for me, certainly, but a book I'm really glad I persisted with, and one that created a genuinely memorable world. ...more |
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1
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Dec 13, 2015
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Jan 05, 2016
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Oct 23, 2014
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Hardcover
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0857660055
| 9780857660053
| 0857660055
| 3.57
| 3,750
| 2008
| Aug 31, 2010
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liked it
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Moxyland is a wild and sprawling science fiction novel set in South Africa in what I would call ‘the near future’, except that it’s actually now past;
Moxyland is a wild and sprawling science fiction novel set in South Africa in what I would call ‘the near future’, except that it’s actually now past; first published in 2008, it takes place in 2018. As it opens, we’re introduced to one of four narrators: Kendra, a likeable character who makes terrible decisions – such as becoming a ‘sponsor baby’ for a soft drink brand, which means she gets to benefit from performance-enhancing technology, but is also branded with the drink’s logo... and becomes addicted to it. There’s also Toby, an insufferable manchild who fronts a vlog with the fittingly Nathan Barley-esque title ‘Diary of Cunt’; adbusting activist Tendeka, who’s the only vaguely level-headed person in the book; and Lerato, a ruthlessly ambitious, misanthropic programmer working for an all-seeing corporation. The blurb for Moxyland tells us it ‘crackles with bold and infectious ideas’, and it does! It’s uniquely fizzy, incredibly colourful, and Beukes’ imagination is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the book does not have a plot. Things happen, more things happen, then MORE things happen, and then suddenly it’s over, without any structure ever having made itself known. The title is emblematic of this problem: Moxyland is the setting of a kids’ videogame Toby plays at one point; it doesn’t have any significance in the story. It speaks to the fact that there is no clear hook to hang the whole thing on. I had fun reading this, and was surprised by some of what hooked me (I disliked Lerato’s chapters at first, but her story, which has a corporate thriller element, became my favourite). It just ran out of steam, or rather I did, when I realised it wasn’t actually going to come together. TinyLetter | Linktree ...more |
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1
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Feb 05, 2021
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Feb 07, 2021
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Oct 10, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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1616203536
| 9781616203535
| 1616203536
| 3.83
| 31,666
| Sep 16, 2014
| Sep 16, 2014
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liked it
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Way too young for me, but good fun and a nice palate-cleanser. Jackaby is a paranormal historical detective story, set in a 19th-century American port
Way too young for me, but good fun and a nice palate-cleanser. Jackaby is a paranormal historical detective story, set in a 19th-century American port where a runaway English girl, Abigail Rook, meets an eccentric investigator, R.F. Jackaby. The much-quoted claim that this is 'Doctor Who meets Sherlock' is actually pretty accurate, and the author's grasp of witty, quick-fire dialogue is excellent. The characters and their interaction are by far the most interesting bits; the paranormal stuff is a bit pedestrian, and my eyes glazed over during a few of the action scenes, but then, I am not the audience for this book. With a strong and funny heroine/narrator and a plot that focuses much more on friendship and adventure than romance (thankfully there is no romantic relationship between the two leads), I wouldn't hesitate to enthusiastically recommend this to younger readers.
...more
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1
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Sep 10, 2014
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Sep 10, 2014
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Sep 10, 2014
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Hardcover
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0297871498
| 9780297871491
| 0297871498
| 2.99
| 1,737
| Feb 19, 2015
| Feb 19, 2015
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liked it
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When I first noticed this book getting shelved as young adult on Goodreads, I assumed it was just because the protagonist is a teenager, and that peop
When I first noticed this book getting shelved as young adult on Goodreads, I assumed it was just because the protagonist is a teenager, and that people were making that typical mistake of thinking teenage character = YA. It's being published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a literary fiction imprint, and doesn't appear to be categorised by them as YA. But I did notice that between the book being listed on NetGalley and listed in Orion/W&N's catalogue, the inevitable 'x meets x' comparative description in the blurb has been amended from '
Children of Men
meets
The Handmaid's Tale
' to the rather more YA-skewed '
The Hunger Games
meets The Handmaid's Tale'. And now I've read it, I do feel it is probably accurate to categorise this as a young adult novel, whether it's intended as one or not. The Ship begins with a few chapters of world-building, establishing a dystopia that's reasonably detailed in its creation, but probably not designed to be subjected to much analysis. It's a future version of the UK, partly recognisable - people still use the internet (on tablets referred to as 'screens'), but access is heavily restricted; ownership of an identity card is the only way you 'exist' as a citizen; those without are subject to government culls. Nature is virtually nonexistent, thus food is incredibly scarce (cue a bit of clumsy preaching about the damage previous generations did to the environment; thankfully this doesn't dominate the narrative). The reader is only shown London, with little evidence of life really existing beyond the capital. Parts of the city are underwater, others burning, and places familiar as tourist attractions (parks, the British Museum, St Paul's Cathedral) are filled with the dispossessed. The narrator is Lalage Paul, a privileged and cloistered sixteen-year-old living in a heavily secured flat with her mother; her father, Michael, who has an influential role in the government, is frequently absent. Lalage enjoys the luxury of relatively plentiful (tinned) food, clean water and a fixed home, but at the expense of any kind of freedom - she has never had a friend and rarely leaves the flat, except to visit the nearby museum, now stripped of most of its exhibits, with her mother. For years, Michael has promised that they will one day leave on a ship, equipped with home comforts and plentiful food, and it's the Paul family's eventual departure on this ship - leading a group of 500 hopeful emigrants - which, naturally, marks the start of the real story. Here Lalage finds herself a reluctant escapee, literally adrift, and kept in the dark; neither her father nor anyone else on board will be direct with her about where they are supposed to be going. In an emotionally involving narrative, she is continually torn between a desire to return to London and help others, and the hypnotic pull of life on the ship. She meets a boy named Tom, and first love distracts her; but all the time there are sinister undercurrents, particularly around the increasingly messianic figure of Michael. Lalage is a good character, but inescapably an annoying one. As a teenager, she is very well-drawn; believable, sympathetic and infuriating all at the same time. She has led an extremely sheltered life, and that is communicated in her development - she is naive to an extent that wouldn't be plausible if she hadn't been so sheltered, and although seemingly quite intelligent, she is slow to realise very obvious things, to a point that can be frustrating for the reader. Her approach to her relationship with Tom is immature in the extreme - she doesn't trust him, sometimes doesn't seem to even like him, yet at the same time she fantasises about the two of them having a fairytale happy ending, repeatedly states that she wouldn't care about anyone else if only he would love her forever. For Lalage, the order and peace on board the ship is monotonous; to those who have lived in chaos, it is joyful, and each party struggles to accept the other's point of view. The reader is trapped in a queasy and often dispiriting push-and-pull, mimicking the movement of the ship, between Lalage's desire for a freedom she doesn't understand and the adults' need for stability. The Ship constantly reminds us that the teenager who thinks the world's against them isn't in the right; but the adult who's patronising towards them isn't in the right either. Ultimately, what makes this work is that it's hard, indeed almost impossible, not to be on Lalage's side. Is she an insufferable spoilt brat at times? Yes. But what she faces - from her megalomaniac father who won't even allow her a few hours to (view spoiler)[grieve for her mother (hide spoiler)]; to creepy Tom, who's so featureless he may as well be a robot, and made me shudder every time he popped up; to the maddeningly calm and condescending people of the ship - is far worse. It lacks the action of The Hunger Games, and there is little meat to the romance, but The Ship will probably play best to teenagers because they will more easily be able to accept Lalage as a heroine and her point of view as 'right'. I found it a captivating read, yet quite a depressing one, and sometimes, though I'm sure deliberately, a repetitive one. Part of me felt more could have been done with the premise, that there was something missing and the last chapters were a letdown; another part of me was impressed by the way this was handled, with the reader's disappointment designed to mimic Lalage's, setting up a cliffhanger ending that could perhaps make this the first entry in a series. ...more |
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1
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Dec 24, 2014
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Dec 28, 2014
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Aug 21, 2014
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Hardcover
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B00KMZNZM8
| 2.93
| 3,647
| Oct 04, 2014
| Aug 14, 2014
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really liked it
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Howard Jacobson won the Booker Prize in 2010 with The Finkler Question; J - described as both 'a dystopian novel like no other' and 'like no other nov
Howard Jacobson won the Booker Prize in 2010 with The Finkler Question; J - described as both 'a dystopian novel like no other' and 'like no other novel Howard Jacobson has written', along with platitudes like 'thought-provoking and life-changing' - is on the longlist for this year's prize. When I read the premise of J, I assumed it would be a serious dystopia, especially since the blurb makes comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. (Actually it says 'J is a novel to be talked about in the same breath as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World', which almost put me off reading it at all - I hate it when pronouncements like that are forced on the reader, and this one seemed a particularly foolish and grand example since the books mentioned are generally regarded as classics.) But, while it matures into something approximating this by the final chapters, it actually starts as a much stranger and more light-hearted mixture than I was led me to believe. This threw me off a bit until quite a way into the book, although I suppose it shouldn't really have surprised me after the strong element of humour in The Finkler Question, and the author's reputation for comic writing. J is also an unconventional love story, with a blossoming relationship between two of the main characters, Kevern and Ailinn, forming the basis for the plot. There is a sort of post-apocalyptic setting, but it's a subtle one. Society is altered in some ways that are minor, but odd enough to be disconcerting; in other ways not at all. It is mentioned more than once that 'the past is a foreign country', rarely discussed, an ethos enforced by Orwellian slogans (or perhaps the logical conclusion of 'keep calm and carry on' mania) such as 'yesterday is a lesson we can learn only by looking to tomorrow'. Consequently, much classic literature and music has been forgotten - or at least is not consumed publicly - as with many, many things here, there is no explicit law against it, it just isn't done. There is some sort of taboo around the letter J, which is rarely used and which Kevern cannot pronounce without making a gesture - covering his lips with his fingers. Digital technology seems to have died out, so in some ways this feels like a historical novel or one about a remote part of the world isolated from modern society. (Although when the characters leave their home town, Port Reuben, and visit 'the capital', there's more of a typical dystopian vibe - city-dwellers are attired in colourful costumes that sound similar to the ones worn by the upper echelon of society in The Hunger Games (I'm basing this on the films, as I haven't read the books) and once-grand hotels limp onward in a state of dilapidation.) Love is championed above all things, and constant apology is encouraged, but adultery and violence within relationships are common for both genders. Above all of this looms the influence of an event only referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED, a concept just as frustratingly opaque to the reader as it is for the characters. It has the significance of some apocalyptic disaster, yet the secrecy surrounding any discussion of it, not to mention the uncertainty about whether it even took place, makes it seem impossible that this could be the case. In amongst all this, the relationship that develops between Kevern and Ailinn is so dysfunctionally whimsical it feels as though it's straight out of some quirky-hipster-romance story - something like Q: A Love Story or The Girl With Glass Feet. With his paranoia, rather pathetic nature and morbid romanticism, Kevern definitely shares numerous traits with Julian, the protagonist of The Finkler Question, while Ailinn occasionally veers a little too close to MPDG territory. Sometimes, especially at the beginning, I felt like I was reading some kind of farcical comedy. Larger-than-life small-town characters have noisy affairs and brawl in the streets. Giving a member of the opposite sex a brutish kiss is a common practice, a disturbing expression of sexual aggression - but the fact that this act is still known as 'snogging' makes it read as amusing. Even murder has something colourful and comic about it and doesn't quite seem real. It is only later that these strangely, and sometimes uncomfortably, funny elements, converge and a darker, more serious narrative emerges. The story takes a new turn, focusing more heavily on the reasons why Kevern is being observed by an eccentric colleague (whose diary makes up part of the book), the secrets Ailinn's 'companion' - half housemate, half foster mother - may be hiding. Similarly, while I didn't feel that the relationship between Ailinn and Kevern ever quite transcended its twee foundations, it does become apparent as the story progresses that it has a greater significance than appearances suggest - which in itself makes it less annoying. This is a book in which threads really do come together slowly, but when they do come together, they make sense of so much. J is, like The Finkler Question, essentially a novel about Jewishness; it is also, indirectly and abstractly, a novel about the Holocaust. This is not something that is made explicit at the start. Even going into the book knowing that this is the case, it is initially difficult to link the characters and their circumstances directly to these themes without feeling that you are clutching at straws, or shaping things to make them fit. It's especially disconcerting, if WHAT HAPPENED is the Holocaust or something like it, that the characters all have Jewish surnames - until you discover the reason for this. The humour and oddness of the first half of J work to obfuscate the real direction of the story in the same way that bland ballads, saying sorry, quaint and unnecessary jobs, sex and petty crime distract the population of Port Reuben from any public analysis, apportioning of blame or questioning of the past. This makes the eventual unfolding of the truth, achieved partly through explanation within the story and partly through gradual realisation on the part of the reader, all the more powerful. There is something richer and more rewarding about J than much literary fiction - that element of light-heartedness also carries over into the language and wordplay - but it's still easy to read. It's a story you can (but don't have to) think about in order to read between the lines; the first half in particular could be read as a typical dystopian tale, and it may not mean the same thing to all readers. Its speculative aspect means that, although it discusses a lot of the themes typical of Booker nominees and novels by big-name authors of literary fiction - identity, memory, the power of history etc - it does so in an entirely original fashion. In a time when bestseller charts and awards lists are still saturated with fiction about WWII and its aftermath to the point that you wonder what else can be said about the subject, this approach makes it far more memorable. Having finished J, I am still not entirely convinced by the comparisons to Orwell and Huxley - but I am far closer to being convinced than I was at the start of the book. Although I don't think any novel is ever really 'life-changing', it is certainly thought-provoking, and enormously clever; it plays with the reader's perceptions and subverts them, not just for the sake of doing so, but in order to draw parallels with the story itself. I really enjoyed this book, but more than that, I was impressed by it. It's also much better than The Finkler Question, and would be a worthier Booker winner. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 07, 2014
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Aug 09, 2014
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Jul 25, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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1447268962
| 9781447268963
| 1447268962
| 4.07
| 569,707
| Aug 26, 2014
| Sep 10, 2014
|
it was amazing
|
First, two points about my experience of reading so far in 2014. 1. I've read some great books this year, but in terms of highly anticipated new fictio First, two points about my experience of reading so far in 2014. 1. I've read some great books this year, but in terms of highly anticipated new fiction, 2014 has frequently been disappointing. Elizabeth is Missing and The Miniaturist, two enormously hyped debuts I had been hearing about since around a year ago, were both perfectly readable and okay, but fell far short of what I expected from them; Sarah Waters' new novel The Paying Guests I found boring beyond belief and didn't even finish. Therefore, when I started hearing about Station Eleven, I approached it with scepticism. It's Emily St. John Mandel's fourth novel, but whereas the first three were put out by an indie publisher, Unbridled Books, this one has been picked up by major publishers in both the UK and US. If you're're active in the book community on Twitter, it probably won't need any introduction - although it doesn't come out until September, in social media terms it is already one of the most talked-about books I have come across all year. The marketing campaign has been extensive and effective. I'm yet to start hearing about the book in the mainstream media but I have no doubt that I will. All of which inevitably left me wondering whether it could possibly be as good as people were saying, and actually put me off starting it immediately. 2. This has been the year I have discovered I really enjoy speculative fiction, or at least some sub-section of it that I'm not quite sure how to define. Three of the most enjoyable books I've read in 2014 - Louise Welsh's A Lovely Way To Burn, Sarah Lotz's The Three, and this - have been based around a version of the near future that might, to various degrees, be called dystopian. All of these books could be defined as fantasy, but they retain a significant sense of the 'real', recognisable world. They are not high fantasy or science fiction and, particularly in the case of Station Eleven, they are more literary in style than many would expect this genre to be. There's a whole other tangent here about how I've become jaded by the hackneyed themes of much popular literary fiction, and find myself drawn more and more towards books like this - well-written, intelligent and driven by character as much as plot, but including components and tropes traditionally belonging to genre fiction: a mystery, bits of fantasy or horror, gothic elements - than I am to more 'typical' literary fiction, but that is another discussion for another time. Station Eleven itself is a book I am keen to recommend, but I don't want to say that much about it. I think it is best approached with little existing knowledge of what happens. It is about a future version of North America, twenty years after most of the population was wiped out by a pandemic. But it starts in the present day, during a theatre performance of King Lear, and throughout the book there are flashbacks to these 'before' moments which gradually establish the backgrounds of several characters - characters who do not necessarily feature in the 'after' sections, but have some kind of link to those who do. Although you may have to wait for some time to find out what that link is. 'Station Eleven' is not, as you might expect (well, I did), some remote outpost in this ravaged landscape, but a reference to a kids' comic book which is... well, it's a part of one of those links. This is a very elegantly written novel, very restrained. It doesn't go too far with its world-building, and it isn't overdramatic; in fact, one of the many remarkable things about it is how quiet this fall of civilisation seems to be. It isn't, of course, and we know this from things some of the characters say, and fragments of their memories, but all of this happens off-screen, with the focus purely on the 'before' and 'after'. The story is more about human behaviour, relationships and the invisible connections between individuals then anything else. The fact that it is set in a post-apocalyptic future could almost be incidental, but I can't deny that the surreal surroundings add an intense intrigue and a sort of malevolent undertone to anything that happens. There is constant, low-level tension. For anyone who finds abandoned buildings interesting, there are parts of this narrative that will be endlessly fascinating. There are flecks, mere flecks, of magic. I'm not going to write about the characters in detail, either, except to say that I loved them. They are so real. Mandel is one of those authors who can do that magical thing of making a fictional person human and sympathetic within just a couple of pages, without much background detail being needed. She isn't afraid to kill characters off, but it's never gratuitous; she also isn't afraid of leaving loose ends untied and important things unsaid. The book Station Eleven most reminded me of was Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad - which I can't remember very clearly and would be hard pressed to recall anything specific about, and yet I repeatedly thought of it throughout my reading of this book. Looking back at my review of Goon Squad, I wrote: 'The chapters, then, are not always directly about the main characters, and sometimes don't even mention them at all; the story reaches out beyond the protagonists to explore the past and future of the people surrounding them. Each chapter works on its own as a self-contained short story but the connections between all of them form... not quite a whole, but more a sort of web, or network.' Most of this is true of Station Eleven, except that it isn't structured as short stories (the post-pandemic narrative runs through the book and is interspersed with flashbacks), but each character's story could, I think, be taken out and read as a short story on its own. Station Eleven as a whole circles one character in particular, but it also tells the stories of various others in order to achieve that. For me, this incredibly enjoyable novel is a perfect blend of literary and genre fiction, the sort of story I would love to read more of: intelligent, elegant, original, with both plot and character realised beautifully. It is a wonderful piece of real storytelling and yet it is tightly controlled; I could have read more and more and more about this world, but I'm glad the book isn't too sprawling. Its clear focus on who and what it is about is a great strength. With this one, you can believe the hype. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 13, 2014
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Aug 16, 2014
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May 27, 2014
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Hardcover
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B00UR2SJZY
| 3.56
| 124,613
| Jul 14, 2015
| Jul 16, 2015
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liked it
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No review of Armada would be complete without a mention of Ernest Cline's debut novel Ready Player One, to which this is the long-awaited follow-up. B
No review of Armada would be complete without a mention of Ernest Cline's debut novel Ready Player One, to which this is the long-awaited follow-up. Both books share lots in common, mainly a love of video games and all things 80s. Like Ready Player One, Armada has as its hero a teenage boy whose obsession with gaming proves more valuable than expected; in this case, it's because aliens are about to invade earth, and the highest-scoring players of a video game named Armada - including our protagonist, Zack - are being recruited to fight them. I really liked Ready Player One, but I wasn't wildly excited about Armada. I picked it to read specifically because I wanted something undemanding and fun, because I didn't feel I had the emotional energy for the other books I was supposed to be reading. Around the time I started it, I was seeing a few negative reviews popping up in my Goodreads feed and on Twitter: in fact, I'm not sure I've actually seen anything positive said about it yet. At the beginning I didn't really get why - it seemed just as fun as Cline's debut - but when I got further in I began to understand. A lot of it is made up of descriptions of gaming and in-flight battle scenes that, to be honest, I found boring. And, perhaps because everything is framed so solidly as being exactly like a video game, I never really felt any real sense of threat from the alien attack (though that is kind of the point). It's a good job, then, that there's another plotline - about Zack's dad, a conspiracy he may have uncovered, and the mysterious circumstances of his death - which is much more engaging. (Correction - much more engaging TO ME.) The film rights to Armada were sold a full three years (!) before its publication, reportedly on the basis of a 20-page proposal, and it's easy to believe the whole thing was written with a movie in mind. Absolutely nothing about it is going to need to be changed - the setpieces, the dialogue, the meticulously detailed weapons and spaceships, even the way the characters' body language and facial expressions are described; it's so much like a sci-fi/action blockbuster, so easy to picture, that it could be a novelisation of an existing film. (Indeed, I think many of these things would/will be better on screen than on the page.) Once it got going, this was what carried it along. I imagined it as being very Guardians of the Galaxy, sans raccoon. Armada was also kind of hatchet-jobbed by Slate this week, and again, I can understand the criticism in that review. For example, I agree that it's wish fulfilment... but it's such harmless wish fulfilment. I could no more hate this book than I could hate an enthusiastic puppy. I wanted escapism, and it delivered escapism. This was just an okay read for me, and I didn't enjoy it as much as Ready Player One. But then, I'm not the target audience at all - I think the fact that I had to google a lot of the references shows that clearly enough. I'm sure uber-fans of Ready Player One and those more familiar with the video game stuff will love it. ...more |
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1
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Jul 05, 2015
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Jul 07, 2015
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Apr 11, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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0552775045
| 9780552775045
| 0552775045
| 3.01
| 2,211
| 1992
| Sep 03, 2008
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liked it
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Split between the 1940s and a modern narrative (1980s/90s?), The Evil Seed tells of the havoc wreaked in the lives of two sets of characters by a beau
Split between the 1940s and a modern narrative (1980s/90s?), The Evil Seed tells of the havoc wreaked in the lives of two sets of characters by a beautiful and ruthless 'nightwalker'. (Basically a vampire, although this kind doesn't conform to many of the popular myths, eg being unable to venture out in daylight.) In 1948, Cambridge scholar Daniel Holmes rescues a girl called Rosemary from drowning; he falls madly in love, only for her to start a relationship with his best friend. His story, charting a gradual descent into obsession and madness, is written as a journal. In the modern narrative, also set in Cambridge, an artist named Alice is disconcerted when her ex-boyfriend Joe asks her to offer a spare room to his strange new girlfriend, the ethereal Ginny. The Evil Seed was Joanne Harris's first novel, reissued after her success with Chocolat etc, and the author's foreword suggests she is now somewhat embarrassed by it. It's easy to see why: it is frequently amateurish and the style doesn't seem to have much in common with her later work (although, only having read two other books by Harris, I'm not an expert). Many of the events stretch the limits of plausibility, to say the least - I'm not talking about the vampire stuff, but things like Joe expecting Alice to let Ginny stay in her house (who would ever do this?!), and Joe seeming completely unfazed at the idea that Ginny might be a heroin addict, as if such a thing is no big deal. The characters' emotions are all over the place and they often contradict themselves several times during the course of a few pages. That said, I still enjoyed this. It's atmospheric, compelling and fun, and although I would have preferred a more subtle approach (it definitely descends into horror towards the end), there's enough gothic intrigue to keep it genuinely interesting. I don't think I can really say that I would recommend it, but I never wanted to give up on it, and I don't regret reading it either. I wanted it to distract me from certain things I don't want to think about at the moment, and it did its job rather well. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 11, 2014
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Jul 13, 2014
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Apr 03, 2014
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1907773754
| 9781907773754
| 1907773754
| 3.81
| 1,047
| Mar 03, 2014
| Mar 15, 2014
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really liked it
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Kirsty Logan's debut collection of short stories combines magic, fantasy and sexuality, all related in lush, descriptive prose. Across twenty stories,
Kirsty Logan's debut collection of short stories combines magic, fantasy and sexuality, all related in lush, descriptive prose. Across twenty stories, the author uses a wide range of narrative techniques, settings and time periods; some of the tales are a few paragraphs long, others far meatier. There is always an element of the fantastic, but Logan always links this to more recognisable depictions of love and lust. The collection reminded me of Lucy Wood's Diving Belles, which also splices modern everyday life with folklore, and Angela Carter's work. My favourite story from the book, 'Coin-Operated Boys', also made me think of Daphne du Maurier's early stories, specifically 'The Doll'. Some of the stories are too short to be wholly effective, but at their best, they create whole worlds within just a few pages. Original and inspirational, this book made me itch to write my own fairytales.
...more
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1
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Mar 28, 2014
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Mar 30, 2014
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Mar 27, 2014
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Paperback
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0698169085
| 9780698169081
| B00HUVUG8I
| 3.79
| 501
| Feb 25, 2014
| Feb 25, 2014
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really liked it
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The Time Tutor is a novella-length prequel to Bee Ridgway's debut, The River of No Return, which came out last year. The story follows two characters
The Time Tutor is a novella-length prequel to Bee Ridgway's debut, The River of No Return, which came out last year. The story follows two characters who become involved with the Guild, the shadowy organisation at the heart of the time travel intrigue forming the backdrop for both books. Because it's been a while since I read River I was worried I'd have forgotten what it was all about, but The Time Tutor is fast-paced, immediately interesting and works well as a standalone story. Despite it being short, I was captivated by the characters and was delighted when the romantic development I was rooting for actually happened! Exciting, entertaining and sexy, this tale reminded me how much I enjoyed the world of River, and made me keen to read even more as soon as possible. Basically, it did its job absolutely perfectly.
...more
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1
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Feb 2014
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Feb 2014
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Jan 27, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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3.62
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it was ok
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Mar 19, 2016
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Jan 16, 2016
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3.55
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really liked it
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May 11, 2017
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Jan 16, 2016
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4.16
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really liked it
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Oct 06, 2015
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Oct 07, 2015
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3.58
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really liked it
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Jul 17, 2022
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Sep 16, 2015
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3.73
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liked it
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Apr 30, 2021
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Jul 10, 2015
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3.93
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really liked it
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Jun 15, 2016
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Jul 01, 2015
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3.42
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liked it
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Apr 28, 2015
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Apr 22, 2015
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3.29
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May 09, 2022
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Dec 03, 2014
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3.76
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May 13, 2015
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Nov 25, 2014
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3.89
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really liked it
|
Sep 03, 2015
|
Nov 05, 2014
|
||||
3.57
|
really liked it
|
Jan 05, 2016
|
Oct 23, 2014
|
||||
3.57
|
liked it
|
Feb 07, 2021
|
Oct 10, 2014
|
||||
3.83
|
liked it
|
Sep 10, 2014
|
Sep 10, 2014
|
||||
2.99
|
liked it
|
Dec 28, 2014
|
Aug 21, 2014
|
||||
2.93
|
really liked it
|
Aug 09, 2014
|
Jul 25, 2014
|
||||
4.07
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 16, 2014
|
May 27, 2014
|
||||
3.56
|
liked it
|
Jul 07, 2015
|
Apr 11, 2014
|
||||
3.01
|
liked it
|
Jul 13, 2014
|
Apr 03, 2014
|
||||
3.81
|
really liked it
|
Mar 30, 2014
|
Mar 27, 2014
|
||||
3.79
|
really liked it
|
Feb 2014
|
Jan 27, 2014
|