Old white cis man. He/him. A well of baseless opinions and muddled thinking. Papysplainer. Won first prize in dance knock-out at the Lincoln Rugby Club social in 1964.
When her father places her entire family in danger, honey badger shape shifter, Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan, …
Superb comic romp
4 stars
The Honey Badger Chronicles, of which the is the first volume, are very, very funny. They follow the adventures of three sisters whose father is a deadbeat deadloss whose only ambition for his daughters is to make as much money out of them as possible. Laurenston works on the idea that honey badgers are the craziest most violent members of the animal kingdom, and that HB shifters add human meanness to the mix. With this collection, she equals Tex Avery at his best.
New York Times bestselling and Alex, Nebula, and Hugo-Award-winning author Seanan McGuire introduces readers to …
Review of 'Middlegame' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is McGuire at her best. It's difficult write about without spoilers, so I'll just say she's writing at the top of her game - and this continues in the sequel.
"Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a …
Review of 'Sparrow Hill Road' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The trilogy is a little piece of perfection. There are books in her longer series that disappoint but these three hang together so well, and the mythology - McGuire builds mythologies as much as worlds - is rich and enticing.
I have read and enjoyed the Murderbot series, as well as the Raksura books. But this one leaves me cold. The author drops you into what appears to be chapter 14 of vol 2 of a three-book epic. You have to puzzle things out from there, and as the characters didn't do anything for me, and the plot line was confused, I can't give it more than two stars.
For one bright, shining moment, Tybalt, King of Cats, had everything he had ever wanted. …
Review of 'The Innocent Sleep' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
L pretty much nailed it in their review. The first third or so of the book gives new material, but once Tybalt catches up with Toby, the reader is into very familiar territory, with little added by the change in perspective
For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, …
Review of 'Indexing' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
If you've read Terry Pratchett's 'Witches Abroad' you'll already have the basic concept: Fairy Tales want to be real, and do their best to manifest in the world, their consequences are often harmful, both to the main players and to unfortunate bystanders. In Pratchett's novel, Granny Weatherwax and her two companions thwart any tales they come across in their travels. In McGuire's book, there is a special agency charged with dealing with them. Armed with their printed copies of the Aarne-Thompson Index (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne–Thompson–Uther_Index), they watch for manifestations and deal with them as they arise.
I'e found the two books in this series funny and good to read. They do not have the mythic resonance of the October Daye series, but neither do they suffer from the long internal monologues and repetitions of that series. Good reading
"Set in an alternate world of art deco beauty and steampunk horror, Monstress tells the …
Review of 'Monstress, Vol. 1' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I was drawn into this series mainly by the art work, which is luscious. However, my interest petered out - I haven't seen the most recent volumes and will probably not do so. The heroine seems to only have one gear, and this gets wearing after a while.
Merged review:
I was drawn into this series mainly by the art work, which is luscious. However, my interest petered out - I haven't seen the most recent volumes and will probably not do so. The heroine seems to only have one gear, and this gets wearing after a while.
"Set in an alternate world of art deco beauty and steampunk horror, Monstress tells the …
Review of 'Monstress, Vol. 1' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I was drawn into this series mainly by the art work, which is luscious. However, my interest petered out - I haven't seen the most recent volumes and will probably not do so. The heroine seems to only have one gear, and this gets wearing after a while.
...Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns …
Review of 'Eleanor & Park' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I read this after reading 'Fangirl' on a recommendation in Maria Sachiko Cecire's 'Re-enchanted.' I enjoyed the dialogues in 'Fangirl', finding them sharp and witty, so I thought I'd give this a go. It's kind of OK, I suppose, for the young readership it's intended for, but there are issues.
There has been a collective recognition that YA literature - indeed, literature in general - has excluded some voices. Heroes and heroines have been white, middle-class, cis and pretty. In 'Eleanor and Park' Rowell seems to have set out to confront this criticism. Her heroine is fat, freckled and red-headed. Her hero is half-Korean. Eleanor's two best friends are black. The author is obviously trying to write a book that is inclusive.
This doesn't quite come off. As nearly all the characters in the book are close to stereotype - I'm not criticising here ... without stereotype, there is very …
I read this after reading 'Fangirl' on a recommendation in Maria Sachiko Cecire's 'Re-enchanted.' I enjoyed the dialogues in 'Fangirl', finding them sharp and witty, so I thought I'd give this a go. It's kind of OK, I suppose, for the young readership it's intended for, but there are issues.
There has been a collective recognition that YA literature - indeed, literature in general - has excluded some voices. Heroes and heroines have been white, middle-class, cis and pretty. In 'Eleanor and Park' Rowell seems to have set out to confront this criticism. Her heroine is fat, freckled and red-headed. Her hero is half-Korean. Eleanor's two best friends are black. The author is obviously trying to write a book that is inclusive.
This doesn't quite come off. As nearly all the characters in the book are close to stereotype - I'm not criticising here ... without stereotype, there is very little fiction - Park, his mother - who is described as doll-like - and the two black girls, DeNice and Beebi, all threaten to collapse into form at times. DeNice is the sharp black girl, Beebi is the big one with the huge smile, and so on.
In the end, I give her cookies for trying, but it's perhaps the case that you can't really deal with race when writing from whiteness. (A lot of authors just pencil in their characters brown and leave it a that: Rowell attempts to go beyond that).
On the love story which is at the centre of the plot, I have to go with this review - www.goodreads.com/review/show/549828838?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1 . Rowell herself seems doubtful; she has her heroine give a rough critique of 'Romeo and Juliette' in which she notes that the star-crossed pair are just too young to have really fallen in love. Then she heaps on sentence after sentence about the feelings that they have for each other, as if she's afraid the reader won't believe her, won't get the message.
The two school bullies, Steve and Tina, are nicely seen; Rowell manages to give them a little depth and the reader can glimpse the children beyond the hulking monsters. The horrors of Eleanor's home are well done, and seem to be drawn from life. Park's ambivalence about his parents' relationship - their love for each other is utterly reassuring, but their love for each other is posited on white male fantasies about Asian women - is neatly placed to make the reader think about why he is drawn to Eleanor.
Rowell is a writer, and she'll write better books than this one.
I got hold of this because it has a positive mention in Maria Sachiko Cecire's "Re-enchanted: the Rise of Children's Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century." The story is YA romance, and not really my cup of tea, but Rowell writes fast funny dialogue. The family background story is more interesting than the love thing, and I get the impression that Rowell is at her best when dealing with domestic horror, but escapes to tweedom. Or should that be tweetidude.
There's a running satire of the Harry Potter saga. As I couldn't get past the first volume of Rowling's plodding prose, about all I can say is that the pastiche is better written than the original.
