ergative's reviews
925 reviews

 Not the best Sachar book, but it does do a great job with the ever-increasing chaos. I found myself feeling very sympathetic for the poor teacher, who must preside over it all. 

 This was a fun romp, and I laughed out loud at multiple parts. But I could see the gears and moving parts in action, and some of those movement were a bit creaky. In particular, I don't understand how Mrs. De Lacey somehow gets so easily bullied by so many people. Part of that is Elinor's willingness to let it happen, of course, but still. I didn't really buy that so many people saw their way to blackmail and extort promises from Mrs De Lacey so easily. 

 The plot was not terribly exciting (especially the romance sub-arc, whose plot-3 breakup felt forced and unbelievable), but the narrative voice was a delight, with wonderful linguistic playfulness, and a charmingly diverse and well-constructed ensemble cast. 

 This was actually better constructed than Melusine, but somehow did not engross me quite as much. Also it ends the primary plot arc on a satisfying note, so I'm not raring to read the next--although I absolutely undoubtedly will eventually. Maybe I'll take a break and read something else instead. 

[Full review up at Nerds of a Feather from 21 Dec] 

I love love love Ropa's narrative voice (as always), and I love the sense of location: this book is very Scottish, and feels like real Scotland, not tourist Scotland and tartan + twee cottage aesthetics. This is a book written by someone who knows about Glasgow/Edinburgh rivalry, the nature of political and status tensions between Scotland and England, disputes around the responsibilities of devolved governments, Scottish independence--all of that is very real and beautifully translated into this post-Catastrophe magical alternate world. That's great. All of that is great.

But the pacing and characterization of this one felt less successful. Esfandiar was great in principle, but underused; Callandar was more of an object to worry about than a person. I never really understood what progress Ropa was actually making on the mystery. She didn't really seem to have anything in hand. Every time she tells people that she's making progress, I wasn't sure whether she actually was and just not telling us, or whether she was lying out of her ass (as she does). When a book is structured around a mystery like this, the reader needs to be kept in the loop.

Also the ending was very abrupt. I know it's supposed to be setting up Book 4, and I will definitely read Book 4 with pleasure. But still--there are ways and ways of ending on a cliffhanger/sequel-set-up, and this was not how to do it. 

[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]

Full review up on Nerds of a Feather from 4 January 2024.

This is a real departure from the type of fantasy that Pulley does best. Typically she excels at creating images and events that depend on some sort of magic, which is evoked but never fully explained. It makes for a dreamy quality to her narrative that is quite distinctive of her style.

In this book, she uses a science-fiction setting, and although she evokes otherworldliness in the same way (the floating gravity, the talking mammoths, the misty solar power collectors), she's forced by the strictures of the genre to explain that otherworldliness, and it just doesn't quite work. If Mars is desperately dry and arid, then why does raising the temperature around a solar power generator create mist? Increasing air temperature makes it dryer, not wetter. (This is why we use humidifiers in the winter to combat dry air, and why dew collects at night, when temperatures drop.) Warm air can hold *more* moisture, not less, so if anything the mist should be gathering where the air gets cold, not where it gets warm. 

Likewise, the vast differences in strength caused by growing up in different gravity systems are beautifully evoked, but the Harrison-Bergeron-like solution, to put Earthstrong people in cages that increase resistance to muscle movement so they can't accidentally hurt native Martians, also seems to carry some strange magical consequences for muscle mass. Sure, if you can't accidentally punch someone with your full strength, that would work, but it seems that the cages also do things like make it difficult to survive falls that would otherwise pose no danger to Earthstrong muscles. How? Why? If your bones are so dense that the fall won't hurt you at Martian gravities, then why would that impact be more dangerous if you're wearing a cage?

There are lots of examples of this: ideas that are evocative and useful for plotting and pacing and tension and stakes, but which simply don't work if you're trying to come up with a science-fictional type solution for them. With Pulley's approach to fantasy, she can leave it in the misty background. With SF, she can't.

That said, the non-SF books worked wonderfully well. I was extremely impressed at how she manages to create a political debate that both reflects current concerns over topical issues like climate refugees and immigration, and also doesn't have a knee-jerk 'these guys are the baddies' side to it. Both sides have genuinely good points.

It's not Pulley's best work. But I devoured it in a day, and will devour her next, because even Pulley's not-best work is still good stuff.

[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]

Like, jeez--whump up the wazoo, some very gnarly noncon, and a primary viewpoint character so incredibly passive that in any other book I would have thrown it across the room in irritation. (I recognize some people are whump-fiends, in which case this is for you, yowzers*.) And yet. I loved this. I stayed up late reading; I read while brushing my teeth, while waiting for the toast to toast. I got up early to finish it. Part of it is because Mildmay's activity does in part make up for Felix's passivity. Part of it was the incredibly rich political and social worldbuilding. Part of it was the unending series of events and developments (even if Felix doesn't instigate much of it). A lot of it was the writing, which just sucks you in and doesn't let go. I don't know. Not my job to explain why I liked it articulately. But I loved it, and I immediately went and bought the remaining three books in the series.

*I don't actually object to whump in moderation. This, my friends, was not moderate.

 Fun and bantery and fluffy and easy, with a refreshingly high body count. Read it in a day. Always what I like in a T Kingfisher book.

 I think this kind of psychological fiction isn't for me. I enjoyed the beginning, but the way that Eleanor and Theo's relationship soured seemed to come out of nowhere and made absolutely no sense to me, and it semed pretty core to Eleanor's subsequent deterioration. Also, the 'doctor' seems to be going about his research into hauntings in a thoroughly bizarre and haphazard way, so although I know that we're being invited to consider his wife an overbearing busybody when she shows up and starts demanding a thoroughly scientific approach to the investigation, all I could think was, "girlfriend's got a point, there.'

 Look, I don't know what it is about Lockwood's writing. This was a literary, navel-gazing memoir about a young woman's childhood and early adulthood--normally everything I find tedious and tiresome about LITRACHURAH. But I loved it. Such is Lockwood.