It's a bleak world that Patience Gideon, a witch in her 50s, inhabits, overflowing with the violence that men do to women. Every woman must figure outIt's a bleak world that Patience Gideon, a witch in her 50s, inhabits, overflowing with the violence that men do to women. Every woman must figure out for herself how to cope with this: a façade of bland docility, canny lies, seething despair, a hard core of selfishness.
If keeping you and yours safe comes down to murder, (view spoiler)[or even mass murder, (hide spoiler)] well, so be it. If you can't save someone else without risking yourself, the other must be left behind. Patience's brutal pragmatism is offset by tenderness toward her "familiar" and by her having impulsively adopted an abandoned girl, who is now sixteen and very inclined to have her way.
There are decent men out there, and Slatter recognizes that they can't be as central to the story as the awful ones. Their support is quiet and comes at crucial moments in the story.
I liked the herbology in Of Sorrow and Such, and the magic, especially the flesh-shaping magic. I'm glad that the women (view spoiler)[ended up being loyal to each other, while also going their own way (hide spoiler)].
I'm not sure if telling this story in first-person present tense was necessary, though it did its job of adding immediacy to many of the scenes. A bit harsher than my usual fare, but it's okay to occasionally have a reminder of what those cozy stories are spackling over....more
Elderly Mrs. Thomson dies, leaving behind a will that baffles and infuriates Mrs. Christian and Nancy, members of her family and household who thoughtElderly Mrs. Thomson dies, leaving behind a will that baffles and infuriates Mrs. Christian and Nancy, members of her family and household who thought they would benefit from the estate. Mrs. Thomson had a daughter who's been separated from her family for decades, and Mr. Brown is the executor of the will who has been called upon to seek her out.
The first chapter of the book is a series of sketches of the four characters who confronted each other over the will after Mrs. Thomson's funeral, and the remaining three chapters show how things shook out for them in the year after that.
I read this mostly because I saw that it was part of Oliphant's Carlingford series, and I hadn't yet read it. I wasn't all that satisfied with the ending, with its rushed and rather too convenient pairing of two of the characters....more
There are some "what not to do" lessons for potential authors to be learned from this novelette, currently priced in ebook at a rather steep almost-$1There are some "what not to do" lessons for potential authors to be learned from this novelette, currently priced in ebook at a rather steep almost-$10.
First, that capital letters have a natural slowing effect on reading, and paragraphs that take up full pages and are full of sentences like this . . .
If there is a really important or a key piece of information, I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, will call a special meeting meaning that Drew Samson, Dena Hope, Veronica Jackson, and I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, will have a group conference call to go ahead and communicate with each other and discussing what we feel that we should do based on this new information.
. . . will cause a reader to balk, and then start skimming desperately to find anything that might contribute to an actual narrative. I've never been a skimmer, but this one forced me to level my skills up.
Second, that padding out a thin and underdeveloped story with identically constructed chapters, each chapter having multiple copy-and-pasted passages, will be very obvious to a reader. Especially if the same exact errors crop up again and again, in exactly the same portions of over a dozen chapters.
Dena Hope used her programming skills and hacking skills to gain information that people that pertain to 64-SQUARES.
Third, that a mystery is not a mystery if you introduce a massive cast of characters over at least 80% of the book, and your culprit is (view spoiler)[somebody entirely different (hide spoiler)]!
If you don't bother presenting any of the logic or investigation that led to the culprit's arrest, where does the pleasure of reading a mystery come from? How does forensic accounting factor into this investigation in the first place? Is a FCPA being there to tell the court that a building's value has gone down to $0 as a result of its being blown up really necessary in a trial for terrorism? Why did Titus Uno's group need to spend (and, presumably, bill) what must be many, many thousands of dollars to surveil dozens of people to come to that rather obvious conclusion? Why do I feel like I've lost cognitive function over the course of reading this barely 100-page-long "book"?
Thanks to the 372 Pages podcast, I've become much more tolerant of naïve art recently, but this one managed to try my patience. That kind of writing, and blatant lazy shortcuts, don't sit happily together. Constant and universal surveillance on 64-SQUARES employees and persons of interest (including one who I'd call the victim of a crime but the author doesn't), and the nicest of nicey niceness, were odd bedfellows as well.
Companies monitor what their employees do, even when they leave there [sic] desk to use the restroom. *** This all could have been avoided if everyone would have been nice to each other.
I did rather like the the idea of a 64-story building with a chess museum on its ground floors, but since it was blown up--I mean "cremated"--before the story even started, there wasn't much to appreciate there. The rest of it was a bunch of the same thing over and over and over again, and an abrupt and unconvincing endgame. Quite possibly the worst book I've read since I signed up on this website. Though I've been told there are worse ones in the 372 Pages library. Lookin' forward to it. :|...more
While I was bored by my first attempt at the novel this is a prequel to, I enjoyed this one. A novella was just about the right length. It plays out mWhile I was bored by my first attempt at the novel this is a prequel to, I enjoyed this one. A novella was just about the right length. It plays out much like a creature feature, with perhaps a slower ramp-up before the bloody deaths start, and a smidgen more characterization than you get in that kind of story... but still not enough to build up a lot of sympathy for the cast before they met their inevitable fate. That was balanced well for me, and I also liked the peeks into the activities of the scientists and entertainers along the way....more
"The Eye of Argon" is a story so legendary, it almost feels pointless to review it. Written by a 16-year-old kid and published in a mimeographed fanzi"The Eye of Argon" is a story so legendary, it almost feels pointless to review it. Written by a 16-year-old kid and published in a mimeographed fanzine in 1970, it gained a notoreity for badness that went unchallenged until "My Immortal" over thirty years later.
Nearly 20 years after MI was posted on fanfiction.net, people still don't really know who wrote it. Theis didn't have the luxury of anonymity, but seems to have taken the riffs and read-alouds in good part as he got older. He passed away in 2002 at the relatively young age of 48, with this story as his only known legacy in the world of fiction.
It's pretty obvious that Theis read a Conan story or two, and in a burst of inspiration wrote a not-dissimilar tale featuring a jade idol, a cult, a corrupt piggish king, a curvaceous damsel, and--of course--a musclebound barbarian swordsman who leaves seas of blood and entrails in his wake. A reader shouldn't come to this story for anything but the wonderfully baffling prose.
So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite lines. Let your brain add its own [sic]s as it will:
The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose[...]
*
Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
*
Grignr merely voiced an sighed grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim, delicate lips between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw.
* All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up.
I have to say that Theis does a much better job distinguishing "its" from "it's" than 90% of people on the internet.
Bonus: expand your vocabulary! If any of these are actual words, I don't want to know.
This story is available for free on a couple of web sites, including one that looks like it was designed in the Geocities era. I encourage anyone who has a few thousand words' reading time available to give it a look. Considering that it was written well before the digital age, its ongoing fame is a remarkable achievement. RIP Jim Theis, whose fifteen minutes has lasted over 50 years.
I read "The Eye of Argon" accompanied by the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast episodes about it....more
I enjoyed the "cozy" parts of this short mystery pretty well, once I got used to the cast of thousands that the reader is presumed to know as well as I enjoyed the "cozy" parts of this short mystery pretty well, once I got used to the cast of thousands that the reader is presumed to know as well as the authors do, and a few of the characters showed off their quirks.
The "mystery," such as it is, is hilariously naive about its subject matter, and I couldn't take either the mustache-twirling villainy of the bad guys, or the floundering vigilantism of the quilting group very seriously. There's a fear of encroachment on small town Cutler, PA from the scary, scary city that pervades the book, and considering the blistering whiteness of the cast, things could get uncomfortable really quickly. But the bad guys are just as white as the good guys. White-on-white crime!
I'm trying to avoid duplicating what the "372 Pages" guys said about this book on their podcast, and find that with that in mind, I don't have a lot to say about it. I'm not particularly excited to read more about the quilters, but this wasn't terrible, especially compared to the Chistmas cozy mystery the podcast covered this month....more
Has the suspicious odor of a first draft, with a bafflingly large cast of characters, plenty of tense shifts, a couple of jarring shifts from first-peHas the suspicious odor of a first draft, with a bafflingly large cast of characters, plenty of tense shifts, a couple of jarring shifts from first-person to third-person narration, and occasional hilarious evidence of lack of editing, i.e.:
- the point of view character isn't clear until Chapter 6. - the corpse is cuffed at the end of the book rather than the perpetrator. - there's more, but eh.
The hacienda setting with its multiple attached businesses and/or charitable concerns, and its extended family, has some promise, but isn't given enough room to distinguish itself beyond a bunch of names. Some friction and stress would add some interest, or details about running the bakery, or something.
This very short mystery could have ridden on clunky charm and gotten another star or so, but thanks to the sleuthing of a couple of online acquaintances, I've learned things about the provenance of this novelette's banal and by the book mystery plot (italics deliberate: see the comments below) that influenced me to give it one star. On a platform that is run by a monstrous corporation, directly accusing someone of shady literary practices is worse than those practices themselves, apparently, so that's all I'll say about it....more
(Note: this is probably one of the longest reviews I've written. These stories were a phenomenon in their day, but they haven't aged well, and a coupl(Note: this is probably one of the longest reviews I've written. These stories were a phenomenon in their day, but they haven't aged well, and a couple of them left a nasty aftertaste. That's pretty much all I'm saying in all the verbiage below. I'll be reviewing something less internet-poisoned next time, so please be patient.)
****
"My Immortal" - I'm not sure whether I should be admitting that I've read "My Immortal," much less reviewing it. But since it was a selection of the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast, and I intend to read through some number of them, and this one's short (around 25K words), I read it on my phone in between other things over the course of a day or two.
First of all: yeah, this is a put-on. With so many meticulously placed malapropisms and a frankly unconvincing number of typos, it couldn't possibly be anything else. (I may come back and add some of my favorite malapropisms to this review later.)
I didn't like this story to start with. Even without having watched a couple of YouTube videos about the "series" (about which more shortly) beforehand, I think I would have caught on very early on that it wasn't intended to be taken seriously. I wasn't all that interested in reading another take-down of Mary Sue fanfic (those have existed since at least the '70s) with the cast of HP shoehorned into roles definitely as goths, and maybe as actual vampires.
But after a dozen or two brief chapters, I started to like it. And then I started to laugh. The writing became more and more riddled with typos, but since the infelicities were introduced bit by bit rather than all at once (another indication that this was crafted-bad, and not spontaneous-bad), it was almost as easy to read as normal English, and I just rolled with whatever it had to offer, whether that was: head-hopping, copy-and-pasted paragraphs (or even chapters), content-warning-worthy stuff, OOC (to say the least), random sex scenes, yet another description of somebody's Hot Topic outfit, time travel because why not?, or what.
In a way, I'm sorry I missed the boat when this was first being serialized, but I was probably 20 years too old for it when it was first posted in 2006, and that was over fifteen years ago. Since I don't have "a time-toner or da tim machine", reading the "restored" copy on fanfiction.net had to do.
I can't bring myself to rate this one. It defies any number of stars I might apply to it.
A surprisingly endearing story. I haven't followed pop music for a couple of decades, and this story introduced me to a good number of "goffik" songs, which along with "372 Pages" and the YouTube videos, made "My Immortal" a cool and hilarious multimedia experience.
****
Edit to add: I decided to buy the print-on-demand collection of this "series" and will add my thoughts on each of the additional stories as I go along. In the video by Sarah Z that I watched, she said that someone she called "Toby" (not their real name) wrote at least some of the "My Immortal" stories, but not the original. (ETA: it shows. more below.)
"My Immortal 2: Wake Me Up Inside" - This is basically just more of the same thing as MI, only with the sex (including incest this time. ugh), self-harm, and misspelling dialed up even higher. MI's Ebony's Satanism didn't seem to have any real thought put into it beyond "Satanism is something that goffs do, so I'll say 'oh my Satan' instead of 'oh my God' and wear decorative pentagrams and that'll be about it." WMUI has an actual animal sacrifice and a prayer to Satan.
Yeah, I dunno. MI was fun. This was kind of tedious, depressing and mean-spirited. For example, MI's Ebony is in a love triangle, but otherwise doesn't fuck around, and WMUI's Ebony fucks whoever's handy, including (CW incest) (view spoiler)[her younger brother (hide spoiler)] and has orgasms on seeing anybody she finds attractive. It doesn't even have the malapropisms that made MI cause barks of laughter at times (or if it did, they were buried so deep in misspellings they were impossible to see). "Toby" completely failed at recapturing what gave the first story its daffy charm. If I give MI 5 stars for being the perfect example of... whatever it is... WMUI gets maybe a 2.
****
"My Immortal 2: Fanz 4 De Venom" - at this point I'm starting to regret having bought this book, even though it was only $10. I'm going to dash through the rest of it and get it over with. Ebony's beta reader this time is "Xanthan Gum," who in the story is a 47-year-old man who eats whole sticks of butter (is this a take on something? well, who cares), and somehow is attending school at Hogwarts. And who is Ebony's new BF both in the story and "Tara's" in "real life." His chapters, supposedly written while Tara is absent or ill, attempt to add literacy and coherence to a story whose appeal relied near entirely on having neither. Boring.
This third story is even more desperate to extract outrage out of the reader than the previous one, and the end result is more dreary and pathetic than funny. Some of the linguistic playfulness is back, and there's a dozen-page ellipsis (with a single word "pity" in the middle of it) which is kind of cute, but on the whole, I would have done better for myself to quit about 100 pages ago. With MI as the basis of a 5-star rating, this gets a 1.
****
"A Vampre Wil Nevr Hurt You" - this one's a little better than either of the stories titled "My Immortal 2." It has the same rather flippant attitude toward CW material, so there's a heads-up. This time around we have two "writers," Tara with a new self-insert character named Moon, and Hayley whose character is Gianna. But really, these characters are all but identical to each other, and to Ebony. I think this is supposed to be a new goffik HP universe, but aside from the lack of MCR concerts it's all but the same: cutting, vampirism, etc.
Tara and Hayley have vaguely different writing styles--Hayley is of the "one sentence, one paragraph" school, and Tara's style is more or less her usual with the "not-great, but at least it's easy to read" spelling of the early parts of IM. After some random bullshit (mostly sex drama and the offhand murder of a couple of the adult HP characters), "Tara and Hayley" out themselves as trolls, scoff at fanfic and its writers (particularly its "horny teenaged girl" contingent, more on that in a sec), and then, with a final middle-finger flourish, goth up JK Rowling in-story and then kill her. MI-scaled rating: 3.
****
Bonus Story 1: "I'm Not Okay" - all of two pages long, but still bearing all the hallmarks of this "series" including offhand CW stuff, a goth self-insert character, and a budding romance with a gothed-up Draco Malfoy. Not long enough to give a rating to.
****
Bonus Story 2: "Ghost of You" - This kind of feels like a prototype for MI, except it was "written by someone who wasn't Tara"--maybe Raven?--and there are a couple of quirks not seen in the other stories, like "She plunged her booted feet onto the stone floor." There's also a laundry list of goth bands, which was kind of cute because in an early author's note Raven had asked for suggestions of goth bands to include in her story. So why not put them all in at once? This one's only a few short chapters long, and all that really happens is MC Eternity arriving at Hogwarts, giving preps the middle finger, and mooning over Draco.
****
After reading something like 200 pages of this stuff over the course of two days, my brain's pretty fried. Especially towards the end, there had been so many self-insert goth characters, all acting and dressing the exact same way, loving the same bands, all into cutting (as far as I can remember), and all with an active hate of "preps," that I couldn't tell them apart or remember which fictional writer had created which. This raft of same-y goth girls could be a commentary on how consumerism can superimpose itself over, or even annihilate individual identity. Or maybe not. I wouldn't count on the writer's/writers' intentions going this deep.
I could parse the first "My Immortal" story as being affectionate toward the material it's parodying, but from the two "My Immortal 2" stories especially, and at least in part from "Vampr," a sense of the author's contempt prevailed. Pathologizing girls and women who write fanfic has been a thing for decades, and in these "sequel" stories, I got a strong sense of the writer's disdain toward the very fanfic communities they're also eagerly fishing for attention from through their trolling. I really should have left well enough alone after reading the first story, but curiosity drove me to read more! I did feel that the stories that parsed as MI prototypes were a decent way to close things off, and somewhat mitigated the unpleasant vibes from the middle of the book.
As a final note, I wonder who's making money from the sale of this print-on-demand book. I hope it's the person, or people, who actually wrote it....more
This short preface to the Pingkang Li Mysteries series is a combination of a low-key heist and a romance. The reader has to do some heavy lifting to tThis short preface to the Pingkang Li Mysteries series is a combination of a low-key heist and a romance. The reader has to do some heavy lifting to transform such an abbreviated relationship arc, including sex scene and Pride and Prejudice-like misconceptions and reconciliation, into a full-fledged romance, though the ending was effective despite that.
The cultural aspects and setting were great, though. I could easily picture the bustling streets and entertainment halls of the Northern Hamlet (since I'm an ignoramus, a lot of the description was overlaid with imagery from Japanese video games like Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood). It has a lot of potential for court intrigue and class mismatch romances... and murder, I suppose, since the following volumes are mystery stories. It was a nice introduction to the series and I'm looking forward to reading more. As a matter of trivia, I have a signed copy of The Lotus Palace whose signature includes a cool stamp impression in red ink. :)...more
When I was in my 30s--the same age as this book's protagonist, Keiko, more or less--a college friend of mine was working at the administration office When I was in my 30s--the same age as this book's protagonist, Keiko, more or less--a college friend of mine was working at the administration office of the college we'd both attended, clearing out some old paperwork for disposal. Apparently at some point students were asked to fill out a form that along with our desired classes, also included our ambitions for the future. My friend found the forms for myself and the rest of the classmates she knew. My ambitions were: "writer and office worker." Nothing more. Mission accomplished, I guess!
Listening to this book took me back to that form, for a fairly obvious reason. Keiko is "a convenience store worker," and I have to say that her finding her niche in society and fitting it so well, and being completely content and happy with it, was enviable. Now, of course, society itself, whether her coworkers, or her high school classmates, or her family, can't just let that lie. She must be "fixed," be a human woman, get the Husband and 1.8 Kids achievement. Even if that maybe-sort of-potential husband is a worthless, lazy incel.
Funny and light with more than a bit of bite. The audio narration by Nancy Wu was delightful. I'll absolutely be listening to this again someday....more
Dex and Mosscap's gentle journey continues. These two books remind me a lot of laid-back anime and manga series such as Aria: there's a bit more refleDex and Mosscap's gentle journey continues. These two books remind me a lot of laid-back anime and manga series such as Aria: there's a bit more reflectiveness, career crisis, and/or pedantry here, but for the most part we're dealing with a post-scarcity society where no one is in any danger of disease or violence.
Some of it's a little unconvincing. For example, the economy is run on what amounts to a "societal benefit" points system, where everyone takes according to their needs, and gives according to their abilities, all very nice. No one tries to take advantage of the system so they take more than they give. The question of disability never comes up because we never see anyone who is disabled beyond one single person who needs to use a cane to talk. There's not even the slightest whiff of crime, or even of a serious disagreement.
The scene-setting is well done on the small scale, but I never got a good idea of what the larger world looks like. It has the feel of a series of skyboxes with open road in between. Some authors don't present the outdoors very well (no shade, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't either), and Chambers seems to be one of them.
The theme again seems to be that it's okay to simply be and not fret too much about achievement. There's also the idea, much as in Aria, that everybody has a niche they can happily occupy. The notion that someone might be stuck in a necessary role that is unpleasant for them occurs to the narrative, and is kind of shrugged off. Dex might not want to be a tea monk anymore, and is unhappy about that, and that's the only real point of friction in the story, (view spoiler)[and it isn't resolved by the end (hide spoiler)].
Mosscap's most interesting part of the story wasn't the question it was asking of the humans along the way, but the chapter where it needed to have a part repaired, and the ensuing discussion of the various materials that were available, and how appropriate they might be considering its values. At times Mosscap feels too human to me (and unbearably twee on top of that), but in this case the question was both a real dilemma for it, and pertinent to its existence as a robot.
It feels like I'm griping a lot, but I do enjoy this little series. In each of these books, there's been a poignant or affecting scene or two, and it has an overall cozy vibe that's nice to turn to in one form or another, now and then....more
I've never been much of a horror reader. The supernatural doesn't frighten me, and body horror is more revolting than scary. The genre doesn't touch mI've never been much of a horror reader. The supernatural doesn't frighten me, and body horror is more revolting than scary. The genre doesn't touch my primordial psyche as it's obviously intended to, or get anywhere close. That's kind of a shame, I suppose, but brains are wired differently and I can't really help that. So for me, "Fever Dream" was working with a handicap from the beginning.
The story: Amanda, our main character, and her daughter Nina, are out in the country on a vacation. Things happen, and as one might guess from the story's title, at times it's hard to tell whether there's really something horribly amiss in this unnamed town, or whether Amanda's mind is conjuring a lot of it up.
Structurally this is a very cool book. It tells its story through three layers of inter-nested narratives that jump forward and backward through time as well as between each other, potentially adding to a reader's sense of disorientation and delirium.
I can easily see a parent responding to this book intensely... much more intensely than I did. It plays to a number of deep-seated parental fears: the child wandering off and getting hurt, or kidnapped by someone the parent thought was a friend; or, more fancifully, (view spoiler)[their identity being usurped by something or someone else (hide spoiler)]. The story's title in Spanish is "Rescue Distance," the distance one would have to be from their child to save them from danger. In the story, it's presented as a near-physiological thing, a rope tugging on the gut.
The town's denizens and Nina are nicely, concisely depicted. I liked little details like Nina falling into crypto-upper-crust speech at times, and how she treats her toy mole much like another child or a real pet. It has a good sense of place and atmosphere: the small town in the middle of nowhere with danger lying not-too-far below the surface. However, it never affected me emotionally, except for one sentence at the very end... and that was more of a slight, fleeting pang than anything more substantial.
It's hard to tell with translated books whether a lack of emotional involvement is a side effect of the process of translation, or if the story itself is unaffecting, or--in this case--if its genre sinks its chances with me. "Fever Dream" is interesting, and worth reading, but I doubt I'll come back to it....more
Although this "volume" of Murderbot--another novella--was released after the novel Network Effect, its events happen earlier. The overall story is a lAlthough this "volume" of Murderbot--another novella--was released after the novel Network Effect, its events happen earlier. The overall story is a locked-room murder mystery, with an accompanying investigation, ferreting out of clues, and narrowing down the culprit.
"Fugitive Telemetry" could easily have been a throwaway, with Murderbot meeting a new kind of AI and developing some relationship with it, more of GrayCris' schemes coming to light, and so on. I appreciate the effort that was taken to make this "not just another Murderbot story," especially since I thought the second and third novellas were a little too similar to each other. I also appreciate that Murderbot was not allowed to hack for a significant portion of this episode, since its hacking feels too plot-convenient and overpowered a lot of the time.
There's a cool relationship arc with one of the humans on Preservation that goes from bristly distrust to something more like respect as the investigation goes on. The culprit, as with many other elements of this series, opens up more questions of identity, although I will leave it to you to read the story to find out exactly how this plays out.
And now I'm done reading all of Murderbot except for the short stories. It's been a number of years since I so anxiously looked forward to the next book in a series. I'll be there first day for the next Murderbot, for sure....more
A quiet, uneventful story about Sibling Dex, a tea monk (a wandering therapist, more or less) and Mosscap, a robot who is one of the first to approachA quiet, uneventful story about Sibling Dex, a tea monk (a wandering therapist, more or less) and Mosscap, a robot who is one of the first to approach human civilization after the robots left it generations ago.
This novella is much more about the journey than any sort of destination, and in fact (view spoiler)[thinking that a destination is necessary is basically the problem that needs some sort of resolution here (hide spoiler)].
While I bristled against the overt pedantry at times, moralizing conversations between the characters fit in with its vibe fairly well. As a fan of ruins of all kinds I enjoyed the cool descriptions of Panga's decayed past, and showing nature in constant death and renewal was appropriate to its lightly-sketched themes. It was more contemporary-slang than I'd want to see from a far-future world, but Gideon the Ninth was way worse about that and I loved it, so there's no huge complaint there. This suited a mood for "short and cozy" to a T....more
This second "volume" of the Pretty Boy Detectives is quite short. I'd almost say it was a novella, or even a novelette, when it comes to pure word couThis second "volume" of the Pretty Boy Detectives is quite short. I'd almost say it was a novella, or even a novelette, when it comes to pure word count. Saying much about it would spoil it, but I can say that the "the Twenties" continue to lurk in the background, and we're introduced to a character from Kamikazari, the mysterious rival junior high across the way.
This series' status as "all ages" continues to be rather questionable. First of all, you have a (view spoiler)[gambling den run by junior high students, which includes junior high-aged girls in the role of bunny girl hostesses. (hide spoiler)] I understand the imagery; it's shorthand for (view spoiler)["a typical casino" (hide spoiler)], and especially when you have popular franchises like Dragon Quest--also for teens--using this exact same imagery, then it makes a certain kind of sense. Still gross, though.
And then there's the running "joke" about Sakiguchi of the Beautiful Voice. It's trotted out every few pages, and it's gotten old, and I suspect that it will continue to show up every few pages for another nine volumes. This gag is bad news whether you consider it a real joke or not. If it isn't a joke, and something that Mayumi is seriously concerned about regarding him, then he's a loathsome human being. If it is a joke, then the joke itself is loathsome.
A couple of quotes from Yukichi Fukuzawa and Antoine de Saint-Exupery add a little bit of solidity to the fluff, but fluff it absolutely is. It's creeping down into the 2.5-star zone as of this second volume. Now that its mystery structure (for a very loose definition of "mystery") has become apparent, there isn't a lot to make it compelling for me. Imaginative plotting only goes so far when you have one-note characters and off-putting elements as described above.
There are books that are genuinely girl-friendly, not the warped sham that's trying to pass for it here, with its protagonist who is basically a milder version of "a Nisioisin protagonist" and doesn't feel much like a girl at all, and "pretty boys" who aren't seen through anything even vaguely resembling a female gaze. Again, one should praise or criticize a book for what it is, and not for what it isn't. In this case, what it is, is an attempt at a female point of view that falls terribly flat, and makes me believe that Nisioisin is lacking in versatility when it comes to narrators and narrative stance.
I have the third book, and am debating whether I should spend an hour or two reading it, or just pass them along to my sibling and call it here. If I decide to read that third one, I'm going to need some other reading as a buffer between it and the various repetitive aspects of these books that are easily perceptible this early on....more
Mayumi has wanted to be an astronaut ever since she was five years old, when she saw an exceptionally bright star on a family trip. She's been lookingMayumi has wanted to be an astronaut ever since she was five years old, when she saw an exceptionally bright star on a family trip. She's been looking for that star ever since, but never saw it again. She's decided--at least partially at the insistence of her parents--to give up her dream on the day she turns 14. On the very last day before her fourteenth birthday, she turns to the Pretty Boy Detective Club at her school for help in finding the elusive star.
Mayumi's fourteenth birthday ends up being pretty exciting, and includes--among other things--a triple kidnapping, a car and bicycle chase, and her cross-dressing as a boy to elude some pursuers. Will she live to give up her dream?
I've read three of Nisioisin's books all the way through now, and one a little less than halfway, and let's just say his books and I have a... prickly relationship. Conceptually they're fairly cool, and (nothing to do with their texts) his publishers always choose excellent artists for their covers and illustrations. On the downside, the writing style is distant and affectless, which makes them feel like intellectual exercises rather than stories about genuine human beings (or monsters). And there's so much cringe, at times. I think it's supposed to be titillating, but those parts come across as pandering and creepy.
This book's blurb claims that it's for all audiences, and that claim is pretty dubious. It isn't as excessive in its cringeworthiness as some of Nisiosin's other books, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who hadn't made it to junior high at least. There are multiple uses of the word "shit," many joking references to pedophilia (one of the pretty boys is in an arranged marriage engagement with a girl who is currently in first grade, you see) and to looking up women's skirts.
On the whole, though, I enjoyed this one. The things mentioned in the previous paragraph crop up only occasionally, and other than that it's a fun, hectic story with some rather odd characters, each with a partiular mien, and one hobby or personality quirk: the tough guy/epicure, the stoic scion/artiste, and so on.
Here's an example of Nisiosin's writing style:
There could hardly be a less suitable place to park a limo than next to a school, but its conspicuous size alone made it an awful choice for criminal activity.
I couldn't understand why Rei would choose such a noticeable vehicle for her crimes, but who knows? Maybe she just hadn't thought about it.
One upside was that they probably weren't pulled over by the police very often....
The whole book is told in this stream-of-consciousness style, rambling along in our narrator's head rather than focusing on the action much of the time. Sometimes it gives me a headache, but Mayumi's baffled responses to her oddball compatriots did make me chuckle at times.
Nisioisin writes something like five novels a year, which is a testament to his dedication to his craft. With that kind of output it isn't too surprising that the ones I've read all kind of feel the same. (There are prolific authors in English who I could say the same thing of.) I'm not sure what keeps bringing me back to his books, because I've ditched other authors forever when their books annoyed me to a lesser degree than his stuff does. It's a weird relationship, for sure. I'll keep on with this series, and with Katanagatari, so look forward to more reviews like this in the future, I suppose!...more
One of those five stars I can't put halfway decent words together about. Sorry. I could easily have read a 350-page novel about these characters, theiOne of those five stars I can't put halfway decent words together about. Sorry. I could easily have read a 350-page novel about these characters, their coworkers, their work meetings (you read this right), their courtship, their disagreements and reconciliations. I paused several times while reading to just enjoy the language and the atmosphere Datt Sharma created.
Oh well, writing a non-entity of a review will guarantee I'll have forgotten most of it in a few months and will want to read it again. :)...more
The Murderbot series is quickly moving up to Discworld's level, in my personal canon. Funny, acerbic, insightful, sometimes moving. Novella length seeThe Murderbot series is quickly moving up to Discworld's level, in my personal canon. Funny, acerbic, insightful, sometimes moving. Novella length seems to be just right for these stories, too. There's enough room for a plot, the introduction of new characters and some development for Murderbot, and not enough room for flab, padding, and poor pacing.
As usual for things I love, I'm torn between gobbling the rest of them up and waiting a little longer to read the next one....more
My history with ol' Sherlock Holmes is spotty. Over the years, I've vowed to work my way through his canon several times... and never got further thanMy history with ol' Sherlock Holmes is spotty. Over the years, I've vowed to work my way through his canon several times... and never got further than finishing this one. A nice audio production by Audible studios with Stephen Fry as narrator--and which includes a foreword to each volume composed by Fry himself--bids fair to see me through it all. Or so I hope! There's over 60 hours of it, and a little goes a long way, so don't expect this to happen tomorrow...
A Study in Scarlet starts off promisingly, as Holmes and Watson meet somewhat by chance and come to room together. Already the reader can see the blooming friendship between Holmes and Watson. There's a need for patience and respect on both sides: Watson for Holmes's eccentricities, Holmes for Watson's always being behind the curve when it comes to the mystery at hand's solution.
The second half of the book, which explains the murder mystery introduced in the first half, isn't anywhere near as good. It's an extremely straightforward and melodramatic (view spoiler)[revenge (hide spoiler)] tale, with characters about as deep as puppets in a performance for children. (The only woman involved in the story being a MacGuffin two opposing camps of men were trying to keep or snatch away from each other didn't help its case, either.) In its favor, it was told in an engaging style, which I took to be the latter-19th-century version of "bestsellerese": simple and fast-moving, with little or no difficult vocabulary. (I could see this one being used as an early ESL text.)
Even if half of it was not all that good, in my opinion, I could see the kernels of something great in this very short novel. I hope that Holmes's further adventures will focus more on characterization for the "walk-on" characters involved in the mysteries, not just on its iconic leads....more