This is a shortish novel, which I read as an ebook. It's told from the point of view of a gecko, and it plays not only with the idea of human chameleo...moreThis is a shortish novel, which I read as an ebook. It's told from the point of view of a gecko, and it plays not only with the idea of human chameleons but also with the mutability of the past. The gecko dreams of his past life as a human; the owner of the house he lives in sells faked noble pasts for the nouveau riche-and-famous; the past he creates for one such client starts to take on a life of its own; and the real past of another client comes back to bite them all.
Intricate and clever. Occasionally I got mildly tangled about which client was which, especially in the dream sequences, and there was an important woman who I lost track of between the two times she was mentioned - both possibly artefacts of reading in busride-sized chunks. Definitely a book that would reward a reread, in any case.
Bad prose, made worse by a worship of numbers akin to that which Le Petit Prince attributed to humans: "Their speed of motion had to be at least three...moreBad prose, made worse by a worship of numbers akin to that which Le Petit Prince attributed to humans: "Their speed of motion had to be at least three times higher than his"; "As he floated down this path at a speed of what had to be at least 90 mph"; endless recitations of exactly how far they're travelling, how tall the aliens, how populous the planets...
Limited characterisation, made worse by unpleasant clichés like Marc's "grossly overweight" and nasty supervisor; his ditsy girlfriend who's only in it for the free homework help plagiarism; the aliens who bizarrely fall into the worst of Western human stereotypes: "She looked just like the other aliens - he couldn't tell what about her appearance was feminine. Maybe it was the hat, which was pink in color"; "The other one had auburn colored feathers, and the facial features were softer and prettier - undoubtedly a female"... We also get the hierarchical aliens (whose names include a number signifying their rank among their entire species); the recluse aliens; the religious aliens; the individualist aliens; and the evil aliens.
A didactic focus on the hard science, tolerable up to the appearance of guns firing rays that "traveled in curves, not in straight lines"; Marc's visions of the future; and myriad feats of magic from the Religious Aliens(TM).
I first read "Shapeshifter" in Tales for Canterbury, and it made me cry happily again here. (Also question the common advice that a story should have...moreI first read "Shapeshifter" in Tales for Canterbury, and it made me cry happily again here. (Also question the common advice that a story should have the protag struggling against a problem and winning with their own abilities. That's a very common pattern for stories, but this story is one of many that proves it's not the only pattern.) It wasn't the only one that made me cry, either, whether in sorrow or joy.
I think I loved every story in this collection. "Kaitiaki" and "Blink" (which might be science-fiction or might not), and "Topknot" and "Ahi" and "Mokomoko" which are probably scattered in order to avoid making a trio. From the tamariki to the kuia, Tina Makereti portrays her characters with depth and understanding and flawless prose.
There were one or two I felt I didn't grok as fully as I should -- for example, in "Tree, the Rabbit, and the Moon" I was reading either not enough, too much, or the wrong things into the title: it resonates with face-in-the-moon stories to me, but I couldn't make that connect to the story; but that's a fault in the reader, not the story. Similarly, so many of the stories connect obviously back to Māori legend that I briefly wondered if they all did and I was just not knowledgeable enough to see the connections; but the stories all work perfectly as themselves, so it doesn't matter.
I read the first three in this series before I'd started high school (skipping the boring parts like the long descriptions of scenery and sex) so desp...moreI read the first three in this series before I'd started high school (skipping the boring parts like the long descriptions of scenery and sex) so despite being terribly unimpressed with book 5 (the stunning thing was that before it came out I'd read a bad speculative fanfiction, and then book 5 turned out to cover all the same plot points) I retain fond memories.
I'm almost certain that the early books in the series contained actual plots; unfortunately, to the extent that The Land of Painted Caves does they're entirely recycled and only start in the last third or so of the book. A few misguided souls hate Ayla out of jealousy and in due course receive their comeuppance. She and Jondalar recycle their epic misunderstanding of doom from The Mammoth Hunters and are reconciled after she recycles her nearly-dying-of-spirit-walking efforts from ibid. The cover copy and an anvil in chapter one suggest that the book's meant to be about conflict between her motherhood and her calling to be zelandoni, but not only does this never come to a head, it doesn't even come to proper tension.
What the wordage does contain is a travelogue of the eponymous painted caves (fair enough) spaced out with Ayla meeting every single person in a dozen caves of the Zelandonii. Every single meeting is recounted, and every single time we get the recitation of her names and ties and the explanation for why she has a wolf and horses with her and the astonishment of the people meeting her at how said animals listen to her. I'm not joking. Over and over and over they say the exact same things. Forget fanfiction: this book could have been written with a random Auel generator.(less)
When Haki's hurt in a drunken car crash, an old man steals the necklace his grandmother gave him. Later he returns to get her necklace back, but inste...moreWhen Haki's hurt in a drunken car crash, an old man steals the necklace his grandmother gave him. Later he returns to get her necklace back, but instead finds himself listening to the man's advice on becoming a warrior and defeating a taniwha.
This book was really quite unrelentingly miserable. His friends bully him, his teachers don't notice the bullying, his home is abusive. In context of course this all works. The story portrays excellently the racist microaggressions Haki faces every day.
My major problem was that his mother is presented as a woman obsessed about her career at the expense of being a good mother. She is furious that his accident interrupted her meeting. At first she seems to be complicit in the physical abuse his father dishes out; later we discover that she is emotionally abusing the father to make him do it. She has forbidden the entire family from having any contact with the father's mother. She no longer even makes her banana cakes like she used to.
Talking about it with a friend, I remembered that the other villain of the piece, a man, was also presented as villainous for the same obsession with individualism and financial success. So the author, I'm sure, never intended this to be about how having a career makes a woman a bad mother -- but the trope is still there. If only the gender of both villains had been swapped...(less)
This is an even shorter book than it seems to be, the last forty pages consisting of the first two chapters of The Siege. Even with that brevity there...moreThis is an even shorter book than it seems to be, the last forty pages consisting of the first two chapters of The Siege. Even with that brevity there was one point where I wondered if the story's conceit could be spun out to full book-length -- but that was before the plot thickened. By the end I was noticing ways it could have been explored even further and enjoying it so much I wished it had gone on longer. (The introduction explains its shortness: in 1975 Ismail Kadare was banned by the Writer's Union from publishing novels, so his subsequent novels were "disguised as short stories" and published in a collection.)
The Ghost Rider retells the folktale of Konstandin rising from the grave to fulfill his promise to take his married sister Doruntine home to visit her mother -- as a detective story. Stres is summoned in the middle of the night to investigate when Doruntine, newly arrived home, and her mother both fall ill with shock. The pressure on him to discover a rational explanation increases when both women die and the supernatural story begins to spread: the heresy of the resurrection motif is exacerbating political tensions between the Catholic and Orthodox churches between which Albania has long been caught in the middle.
The narrative is gripping: the voice and style is of a cosy murder mystery, but threaded with half-remembered dreams and reinforced with the steel of political awareness. As a legend is formed, so is national identity. On one level of reality, what happened becomes irrelevant; on another, it is the foundation stone of everything.
I'm glad I created my "unfantasy" tag. There's nothing actually fantastical about this novella, but thematically it reeks of the fae, of transformatio...moreI'm glad I created my "unfantasy" tag. There's nothing actually fantastical about this novella, but thematically it reeks of the fae, of transformations and of secret curses.
The nameless narrator meets Regan while in the grips on depression and falls under the spell of this woman who everyone falls in love with. Regan takes a liking to her, too, and soon the two are inseparable. You know those melodramas where a poor girl emulates a rich girl, secretly plotting to take her place? Here it's Regan plotting for the narrator to take her place, and it's deeply, deeply creepy.(less)
(Trigger warning: the first chapter narrates the rape and murder of a minor from her own point of view.)
The conceit of this story, that a murder victi...more(Trigger warning: the first chapter narrates the rape and murder of a minor from her own point of view.)
The conceit of this story, that a murder victim is narrating from heaven, worked brilliantly here. The story is only about her to the extent that it's from her point of view; really it's about the healing of her family and friends, and those were all the parts that made me teary.(less)
This was a fantastic read but at times a very hard one; serious trigger warnings for child abuse (verbal, physical, sexual).
It begins as a beautifully...moreThis was a fantastic read but at times a very hard one; serious trigger warnings for child abuse (verbal, physical, sexual).
It begins as a beautifully sweet story about racial and sexual and gender identity; about family separations made by force or by choice, and about forbidden liaisons both healthy and unhealthy. Set in the country of Lantanacamara, colonised by the Shivering Northern Wetlands -- more an open code than fantasy countries -- the story focuses on three generations of locals, straight and gay, cis and trans, more and less inculturated by Wetlandish education. The narrator begins by disclaiming any significant role in the story; instantly I want to know more about him, and (though he was right that this is more Mala's story) I was not disappointed.
The main story, switching among its several timelines, grows darker and winds tighter with perfect pacing. Revelations are neither too delayed nor too forced. And as it heads towards the catastrophe we've foreseen, through horror worse than we could have imagined at the start, so it brings us towards its equally inevitable -- and no less satisfying -- eucatastrophe.(less)
This is mostly Nikki's story, of how she's affected by her brother's mental illness and her journey in understanding it - caught between Māori and Pāk...moreThis is mostly Nikki's story, of how she's affected by her brother's mental illness and her journey in understanding it - caught between Māori and Pākehā models of understanding - and her journey alongside that of getting to know herself and her strengths. Her grandmother tells her that the dolphin Tepuhi is her guardian, but her grandmother is demonstrably not infallible and with the repeated point that Joshua is of the sea while Nikki is of the land, I think the book bears out that the real/more effective guardian for her is the pīwaiwaka.
Her brother's story is told in the gaps between, and completes the book.
Despite the focus on Nikki and Joshua, we get to see various other points of view, showing the further impact on the rest of their family and their motivations. Some of the point of view shifts are a bit clunky, for example when we get a single scene from the Pākehā doctor's point of view, or just a couple from Nikki's boyfriend.
But this is well-told; the author (of Ngāti Hine) is a clinical psychologist and has worked in Māori mental health services, and the emotions of the story ring very true to me.(less)
I can see why I didn't enjoy this when reading it as a kid. I liked Mahy's fantasy/sf novels, and the fantasy content in this is subtle to ambiguous....moreI can see why I didn't enjoy this when reading it as a kid. I liked Mahy's fantasy/sf novels, and the fantasy content in this is subtle to ambiguous. My tolerance for non-genre has increased in my old age, however, so this was a decent read even though now it's perhaps a bit young for me. :-) Sophie seems likely to have been inspired by Mahy's own aunt (to whom she used to tell secrets, knowing they'd be promptly forgotten). The ending was just a little happy-happy for my taste but not ultimately satisfying.(less)
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