Review – Page 7 – markwebb.name

A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge.

A Book of Endings is a short story collection by Deborah Biancotti. I first came across Ms Biancotti’s work when I read Bad Power earlier in the year, which I liked very much. As a result I’ve been eager to get my hands on A Book of Endings.

So, already being predisposed to like Ms Biancotti’s work, I got about three quarters of the way through A Book of Endings and felt compelled to click the “become a fan of this author” button on Goodreads. I enjoyed the way that characters were described and developed (difficult in the shorter forms), I enjoyed the turn of phrase used and I found the settings and language to be atmospheric. It was a great reading experience.

That’s not to say that I necessarily “got” every story. There were quite a few times where I had to go back and give a story a second read (or at least read the last few paragraphs very carefully) to draw a conclusion about what I thought had happened. In the Afterword, Ms Biancotti talks about her stories being criticised for having an unsatisfying ending (hence the name). As I’ve reflected back over my reading experience of the collection, I realised that I’d spent a great deal of time over the last week or so musing over various stories, puzzling and teasing away at them at the back of my mind while I formed an opinion on what I thought they meant. That, to me, is not an unsatisfying pastime.

(Of course, in re-reading the previous paragraph I realise an alternative explanation for my inability to achieve immediate comprehension could be a lack of intellectual horsepower on my part. I choose to believe that the stories are designed to provoke thought and thus have a deliberate level of ambiguity. It helps me sleep at night).

Ms Biancotti speaks in the Afterword about the theme of work that runs through many of her stories – one’s sense of identity outside of work, balancing work with life, the terrible things that can be justified as just being part of a job. It was interesting to reconsider some of the stories in that light when preparing for this review. That kind of reflection is not something I would normally do when I finish a book – a benefit perhaps of taking the time to write up a review!

There are 21 stories in the collection. I’m not going to comment on them all or give away much by way of plot/storyline (not useful when describing a collection of short fiction), but I will make comment on a couple of examples that particularly struck me.

The collection opens with a couple of intriguing stories that start off in a seemingly normal world, and get progressively weirder. Diamond Shell and Number 3 Raw Place create the sense of a contemporary setting, then gradually created a steadily increasing sense of the disconnection for the characters using supernatural devices. Both stories had endings that fell into the “read twice” category for me.

Hush was an interesting take on future world where human minds are mashed in with animals. Once I started to read it I realised that I had come across Hush before in audio form on the Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction podcast. The ending of this story really stuck with me.

I enjoyed the structure of Pale Dark Soldier, with the form of the story matching the state of mind of the narrator. Well developed and very disturbing.

The stories in the middle section had a more dystopian feel – futures with energy and water shortages for example. A good example was Watertight Lies, which particularly caught my attention for its very enjoyable dialogue and was certainly one of the stories where the ending was easily understood, but was somewhat of a cliff hanger, leaving you wanting to find out more.

Six Suicides was another story where our found the structure very interesting – interconnected mini-stories which gave an experience somewhat akin to peeling an onion as layers of the story were revealed.

I really enjoyed The Tailor of Time and King of All and the Metal Sentinel. Both stories focused on creatures acting out a pre-programmed course (literally in one case). The stories providing interestingly contrasting treatments of the ability transcend the limitations of your job, and I think it was a good choice to have the two stories next to each other in the collection.

I found Stealing Free to just be a fun story – I liked the level of the absurd (I’ve never ever thought of a thieving Salamander as the hero of a story). The vast bulk of the stories in the collection deal with more serious themes, Stealing Free did a good job of providing some comic relief – a transient lowering of intensity which helped sustain the reading experience.

The Razor Salesman did an excellent job of building tension throughout the story with a surprising result at the end. I found it quite gripping.

Overall I found this to be an excellent collection, thought provoking and beautifully written. It has reinforced my hope of seeing more work by Ms Biancotti in the future – I would love to see what she would do with a longer work. Highly recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi/Ben Peek – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge.

Above/Below is made up of two novellas – Above by Stephanie Campisi and Below by Ben Peek. The stories are based in the same world – a world where the inhabitants have split themselves into two main groups. The inhabitants of Loft have built cities that take to the skies and float amongst the clouds, while the inhabitants of Dirt remain on the surface of the planet. It is a fairly blatant have/have not scenario – the citizens of the various city-states of Loft are relatively wealthy and healthy, using lopsided trade agreements to get what little they need from Dirt. By comparison, the citizens of Dirt live in poverty and sickness, with everyone suffering from what seems like radiation and other pollution related sickness.

The catalysing event of both stories is the literal fall of one of the smaller flying city-states (Adur). Above is set in another of the flying city-states Liera, and is told from the point of view of Devian Lell (a “cleaner” who works outside the city cleaning it of pollutants – a very low status job with a high possibility of sickness – and former dissident who has a now waning passion for finding out more about Dirt). He is reluctantly assigned to Dhormi, an ambassador from Dirt come to discuss the ramifications of the fall of the city of Adur.

Very like the Upper Decks in Richard Harland’s Worldshaker young adult novel, the world of Loft was painted in a very unsympathetic manner. The vast bulk of the citizenry exploit Dirt for raw resources without much thought to the consequences. Ms Campisi chooses to tell the story from a very low status individual who already has significant doubts about the society he lives in. As such, while some of the descriptive imagery is beautifully rendered, you don’t really get to see how the bulk of Loftian society lives.

Devian is buffeted by events, as a result I found the Above storyline to be a little passive. The prose was excellent, the imagery vivid, the protagonist well developed and described – I just found myself not really caring as much as I wanted to about the outcome of the plot.

Below is set in Dirt and is told from the perspective of Eli Kurran, a security officer in Dirt assigned to the diplomat who visits Dirt in the aftermath of Adur crashing to the surface. Kurran has recently lost his wife to cancer and is reluctantly recalled to duty for this mission.

Inhabitants of Dirt are exposed to radiation and other pollutants from the womb, and as a result have a very limited lifespan. To extend it, they have “purifiers” surgically embedded around their twelfth birthday. These have the appearance of metal spikes sticking out of the body, which expel toxins from the bloodstream and dramatically life expectancy (from an average of 22 to 48 – still not great!). This one feature stuck with me and created a strong visual image of the citizens of Dirt. Due to this and the general setting, Below had a much more dystopian feel than Above.

I felt a much stronger connection with Kurran than with Devian. Kurran, while still buffeted by events, seemed to take some measure of control over them. The story seemed a little more strongly plot driven than Above, perhaps with slightly less background and character development. The action scenes were well written, and while both novellas did not resolve all of the overarching plot elements I did get more of a sense of closure from Below.

I read the eBook version of the book. In the original print version, the books are printed using the “tete-beche” format (like some of the old Ace Double books released in the US). Theoretically it doesn’t matter which order you read the novellas in. Of course, having picked one order you can never really go back and try the other way around in the same way, but I think that reading Above then Below is probably the best. The understanding of the world and the relationship between Loft and Dirt you gain in Above makes the Below story more impacting. I’m not sure that it would make as much difference the other way around.

So, in summary both excellent novellas. If you like character development better than I suspect you’ll prefer Above. If plot is more your thing, then I suspect you’ll drift towards Below. But either way, the combination makes for a very satisfying read.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines – review

The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines is a powerful short story collection. I first came across Mr Haines’ work a couple of years ago when I started listening to the (now sadly defunct) Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction podcast. I’ve told the story of how that first story impacted me elsewhere on the site, but I’ve been keen to read more of his work ever since.

Along the speculative fiction spectrum, horror is probably my least visited corner of the continuum. However, The Last Days of Kali Yuga is about as far from splatter punk and evil killer clowns as you can probably get. While supernatural entities do abound, more often than not the stories are about those nastiest of monsters – people. The language is raw, visceral and genuinely disturbing. It was an excellent read.

First for some general comments. When I heard my first Paul Haines story (The Devil in Mr Pussy on the TISF podcast) I was genuinely impressed but hadn’t realised that Mr Haines was so widely admired in the antipodean speculative fiction scene. The introduction to the collection contains short discussions by a number of other authors and editors about their experience of knowing not just Paul Haines the author, but also Paul Haines the man. I found these descriptions to be interesting and in many ways moving, but they also put me in the right frame of mind to read the rest of the book by giving me a hint of what to expect (from a perspective of tone, not content). If, like me, you are relatively new to Mr Haines’ work I would recommend not skipping over this introduction – it did add to the reading experience.

After each story is a brief afterword by the author describing the circumstances of the story you’ve just read, as well as a description of the general reaction it received and some insight into Mr Haines’ creative process. As a (very) amateur writer, I found these afterwords fascinating although they were slightly depressing in that they highlighted just how clumsy my own process is.

There are twenty stories in the collection, all of them excellent. If I was to write something about every story you’d still be here tomorrow, so I’ll just highlight a couple of the stories I found particularly compelling.

The collection opens with Doorways for the Dispossessed, a story exploring the dangers of seemingly harmless spiritual exploration. It was one of many stories in the collection inspired by Mr Haines’ actual travels across Asia and India. The premise is simple enough – imagine “astral projection” was actually possible but left you vulnerable to unsavoury outside forces. But the writing is so visceral in charting the emotional descent of the narrator that the very dark ending is shocking but, on reflection, perfectly logical.

Burning from the Inside amused me greatly with the concept of the city of Adelaide as an anti-spiritual nexus to offset the likes of Byron Bay. (For any overseas readers – Adelaide the capital of a small Australian state, Byron Bay is where people had traditionally gone to drop out of mainstream society and live the surfing/hippie lifestyle – although it is so expensive now that you need to be a really rich hippy to live there). It would certainly explain a few things about the two years I lived in Adelaide. I should hasten to add that the story isn’t amusing – more dark horror – but my amused reaction to the characterisation of Adelaide persists.

Several of the stories show the shallow side of urban living in the early 21st century. Taniwha, Swim With Me is probably the most blatant example of this, dealing as it does with a corporate retreat (an example of possibly one of the most shallow of modern day activities). As well as being a great story, I was particularly interested in the use of New Zealand mythology, which I haven’t seen much of in speculative fiction.

Mr Haines writes from some very unsympathetic perspectives – and his tendency in some stories to use himself as the protagonist means that he would be more at risk of readers ascribing some of the less savoury motivations of his characters to himself. It added a lot to the stories – making them darker and more disturbing. Father, Father is an excellent example of this style of story.

It is probably fair to say that Mr Haines doesn’t have a problem with depicting highly sexual content. Her Gallant Needs is a good example of this, with a sexual predator at the heart of the story. Mr Haines does not shy away from uncomfortable content in this regard – with potential victims being quite young. Giving the 80s setting, I found myself vicariously reliving my own desire to own an Atari 2600 during that time. I particularly liked the end of this story – achieving an outcome and happily ever after don’t always go hand in hand.

Towards the end of the book is the novella Wives. By far the longest work in the collection, it does the most world building and character development. It paints a picture of a dystopian future Australia where declining fertility and a general preference for male offspring has meant that women are few and far between, especially in rural locations. The story charts the course of Jimbo based in the Victorian town of Shepparton and his attempts to gain (buy) a wife and family. The world is brutal and hints of the attempts by an organisation known as the Cartel to establish a new society using their control of the supply of women and technology as levers (amongst others). There is little to like about Jimbo, and the displays of misogyny and racism almost distressingly overt but yet utterly believable. It certainly didn’t paint a rosy picture of our ability to overcome future challenges. But despite the bleak feel to the story and the lack of sympathetic characters (at least the lack of sympathetic male characters), I found myself unable to put the book down and read the novella in one sitting. The writing was compelling and the world was richly structured. You wanted Jimbo to redeem himself. I couldn’t even begin to guess at the ending and the story kept me hooked, wanting to know what would happen in the end.

The very last story (The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt) was the only previously unpublished piece in the book. It had an almost autobiographical feel, describing a version of Paul Haines having a mid life crisis. The story was deliberately disjointed, and I found myself having to read it a bit more slowly and carefully to know what was going on. It has a very unreliable narrator and jumps between the present and the past unpredictably. But it is a story worth a careful read.

I’ve tried to pick a scattering of stories to give a sense of the collection, choosing stories that I thought were representative. The collection as a whole is excellent – I highly recommend it.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord – review

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord is a fable, complete with narration by an all knowing story teller. The story is based on African mythology and tells the story of Paama, an escapee of an unhappy marriage who returns to her parent’s village. Her talents as a chef are prodigious and her husband, an incorrigible glutton and a general all round fool, follows her to try and compel her return.

At the same time all this is happening, the spirits of this world (the djombi or undying ones) have stripped one of their more powerful brethren of the power of chaos, and gifted that power to Paama. The main thread of the story chronicles the effort of the spirit to recover his power from Paama and Paama’s reaction to having the power of chaos at her command.

The style of the novel was interesting and it was a quick read, with the story moving along at a good pace. The writing is lovely, but I must admit I didn’t feel a great degree of connection with any of the characters, so I found myself admiring the book at an intellectual level, but not really caring about the outcome.

I don’t know anything about African folklore, so I found the exploration of the world of the djombi fascinating. The complex interactions between the various spirits that was hinted at through the book were tantalising, and I would have been very interested in hearing more about that side of the world.

I get the sense that there might have been more layers of meaning in the novel than I am giving it credit for. Certainly there was a strong sense of characters, both human and djombi, learning lessons, rehabilitating and reconciling. To be honest I’m not a huge fan of being beaten over the head with morality – fortunately the lessons were weaved into the story with enough skill that I wasn’t completely thrown out of the narrative. Still, the story was driven more by an exploration of characters than a strong plot. This tendency, combined with my lack of emotional connection with the characters, was enough to dampen my enthusiasm for the novel.

I read this novel as a result of it being the subject of one of my favourite podcasts, The Writer and the Critic, this month (January 2012).

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Neil Gaiman at the Wheeler Centre

I just listened to the recording of Neil Gaimen‘s recent appearance at the Wheeler Centre. I’ve never listened to him speak before – it was a very interesting insight into his approach to working across an eclectic range of media, the modern publishing scene and his sources of inspiration. Also very funny – I particularly liked the panda story towards the start of the presentation.

If you haven’t had a chance, I’d recommend watching the video of the event that is up on the Wheeler Centre website.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes – review

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes has a very interesting premise. People who have committed heinous crimes (mostly murder) have their guilt manifest as an animal that cannot be far removed from their person on pain of… well pain. With such an obvious manifestation of a shady past, those with animals generally form a sub-class of society. But with this downgraded socio-economic status comes one advantage – the animals confer on their “owners” a power. The exact nature of the power changes from person to person.

The story is set in an alternate Johannesburg in an alternate South Africa. The main character (Zinzi December) is in possession of a sloth, who gives her the ability to find lost things. While her past is never examined in depth, it becomes clear fairly early that her upbringing was relatively privileged and that she’d been a journalist in a previous life.

First off can I say – a sloth! The choice of animal alone made me predisposed to like this book. There must have been some temptation to use a “cool” animal. Ms Beukes resisted that temptation, and created a much richer character pair between Zinzi and her sloth as a result. I notice nobody seemed to name their animal – I guess as a manifestation as a part of themselves it would seem somewhat redundant.

I liked the Zinzi character a lot. She is obviously a very flawed protagonist – she did something awful to get her sloth in the first place and has amassed a significant debt courtesy of a former drug addiction, which she is paying off by undertaking some morally questionable activities. While she doesn’t show much remorse for doing what she needs to in order to survive, it is clear that she is striving to extract herself from her situation and have the chance to lead a better life. It made for the kind of character I like – flawed but functional.

The story reads as a urban fantasy detective novel, with Zinzi looking for a missing pop star in return for a sizeable fee. I found the plot solid and reasonably engaging – it felt mostly like a vehicle for showcasing the world building and main character, but was interesting enough to keep me along for the ride.

The description of Johannesburg was enthralling. In fact, there was a fantastic sense of place throughout the novel – I thought Ms Beukes did an excellent job of painting a picture of the city and its surrounds (of course I have never been to Johannesburg so I have no idea whether it was an accurate picture but it was certainly vivid!)

The themes of how society treats its underclasses were woven in subtly enough that I didn’t feel beaten over the head (soften perhaps by the fact that the price of entry to this particular part of society was killing someone – no accidents of birth here).

I really liked Ms Beukes use of alternate media/communication formats for showing backstory and moving the plot along in parts. Email scams, chat sessions, newspaper articles – even an IMDb entry. As much as I liked them, I did wonder a couple of times whether those aspects would make the book date a little more quickly than it otherwise would (a little like the more recent William Gibson novels Spook Country and Zero History). Along with some other elements – such as naming brands and giving a definitive timetable for the introduction of the animalled – it marks the book as of its time.

I was heading towards absolutely loving this book, but I felt a little let down by the end. Without giving any specific plot away, I felt Zinzi’s participation in the final scenes was very passive. If she hadn’t been there, I’m not sure what would have been different. Still, it was an excellent book overall and hopefully there is a sequel somewhere in the works – I’d love to read more about this animalled world.

I read this novel as a result of it being the subject of one of my favourite podcasts, The Writer and the Critic, this month (January 2012).

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge.

The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood was a very interesting read. It is set in Melbourne, Australia in a near future where the Australian population has become almost entirely sterile as an unintended consequence of a hastily rolled out mass vaccination program for a new strain of avian flu. A new ultra nationalist/ultra conservative/ultra religious party called Nation First has used the crisis to get into power, and immediately denounced scientific infertility solutions as being the work of <insert bad supernatural entity of choice here>, with clean living and godliness being the only way to fertility.

The heightened awareness of fertility has led to an even stronger set of prejudices around gender identity. The protagonist, Salisbury Forth (Sal), identifies as androgynous – not the easiest path in this milieu. Sal works as a bicycle courier for an illegal fertility treatment distributor and is an animal rights activist. When someone starts distributing inferior knockoffs of the treatments under Sal’s employers brand, mystery ensues.

I recently read and enjoyed Ms Westwood’s contribution to the Anywhere But Earth anthology, so I’ve been looking forward to reading this book.

The heightened gender politics in the novel were very confronting. While obviously exaggerated in this darker world, you can see the origins of the attitudes represented in today’s society. I’ve always struggled to understand why people care so much how someone choses to live their lives when it is not harming anyone else, but if you have a relatively liberal circle of friends it is easy to forget how much prejudice still exists in broader society. I think Australians in particular will resonate with the future painted, because you can certainly identify those aspects of contemporary Australian political life that are being built upon to create the world of The Courier’s New Bicycle.

Counterbalancing this dark setting is a beautifully rendered series of relationships that show the importance of the family you choose to form around you in life as opposed to the one you are born into. The examination of self in this context was very powerful, and one of the stronger elements of the book.

That’s all a bit metaphysical though, so lets focus on the story for a moment. Sal-as-reluctant-detective investigates an acceptably interesting mystery and there is a good balance of action with mystery solving. Care is taken to ensure that all red herrings are explained. Sometimes the explanations felt a little forced, but you certainly weren’t left wondering about any loose ends. All of the sometimes disparate elements of the story come together at the end.

The sense of place was also very strong in this book. My wife is from Melbourne originally, and as a result I’ve spent more time there in the last 10 years. I loved the description of the dystopian city and the images created of settings I know (especially some of the fancier parts of the southern parts of Melbourne that have fallen on hard times!). For those not familiar with Melbourne it will obviously have less impact, but for those that are it is a fantastic contributor to the reading experience.

The character of Sal was very sympathetic, and the story was certainly arranged such that future novels could be set in the same world. If any ever are, I’ll be lining up to get my copy.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge.

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti is one of the Twelve Planets series published by Twelfth Planet Press (12 boutique collections of stories by Australian women writers). It is made up of five shorter stories, including:

Shades of Grey
Palming the Lady
Web of Lies
Bad Power
Cross That Bridge

This is the first work by Ms Biancotti that I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. The five stories are set it the same world, a version of modern Australia where some people have highly unique and personalised powers (the exception being the short story Bad Power which is set in the same world but in an earlier time period).

I think the setting established in this collection would lend itself well to a longer story as well, and this collection did an excellent job at establishing a very interesting background if Ms Biancotti ever decided to go in that direction.

I loved the way the stories related. They were very cleverly crafted to fit in to one other well. Minor characters introduced in one story become dominant in another. I don’t think you’d get anywhere near as much impact/understanding if you read the stories out of order. The writing is fairly dark but with very balanced characters and each story contains an interesting exploration of aspects of human nature and how people react to the unknown.

Shades of Grey introduces the world and Samuel Rainer (“Esser”) Grey, a wealthy man used to getting his own way in life who finds that he is literally indestructible and isn’t impressed. It is an interesting exploration of a man who, through both his wealth and his power, finds himself living a consequence free life and the lengths he goes to in order to try and re-introduce consequences into it to feel more human. This is not a pleasant tale – Ms Biancotti takes Grey to a dark place. But as a result the story packed more of a punch.

Palming the Lady takes a minor character from the first story, Detective Enora Palmer and makes her the lead. In this story, she is investigating a complaint by a university student (Matthew Webb – somewhat unlikeable in this story which is unfortunate given our shared last name) about being stalked by a homeless woman. It turns out the homeless woman has a power as well. I liked the way the unnamed homeless woman was described, taking the reader from a superficial description of her appearance (mimicking most of our initial reactions to homeless people) to making her a very sympathetic, richly described character, all without telling us her name.

Web of Lies focuses on in on the Matthew Webb character. His father has just died, and it turns out that Webb has a power as well, one that his father has kept him medicated against for most of his life. The story is mostly told from Webb’s drug/alcohol/hangover addled perspective. With Webb’s disintegration we also see his mother’s emergence from her own prescription drug haze. The mother character is very interesting/chilling, and by the end of the story I found myself rethinking the entire family power dynamics.

Bad Power was very interesting. Told in first person and in a different (much earlier) time period, it tells the story of one of the first people in Australia to have emerging powers and the reaction of those around her. The style of story telling is very different, and to be honest it took me a couple of pages to work out what was going on (the connection between the first three stories is a lot clearer, this one you have to work at a bit). The story telling is strong and quite dark, but the ending is more surprising as a result. Having finished the book and looking back, I would say this is probably my favourite story of the lot although I might not have said that when I was in the middle of reading it. I think the shift in time and setting worked well to provide a contrast to the other stories.

Cross That Bridge is back to modern Australia, this time focusing on Detective Palmer’s new partner Detective Maxillius Ponti. Detective Ponti has a knack for finding lost children and uses it to track down Angie, a young girl who has used a power of her own to leave her suburban life behind. It is probably the most optimistic of the five stories, with Detective Ponti seeming comfortable with his power and using it for good. It nicely rounds out the collection.

The blurb for this book says “If you like Haven and Heroes, you’ll love Bad Power“. Having just watched season 1 of Haven, I can certainly see where the comparison is coming from – Detective Palmer reminded me a lot of Special Agent Audrey Parker and the view of powers as more of a curse than a blessing is a theme that runs through both shows. Bad Power is sufficiently different as to stand apart though – as much as I enjoyed Haven, Bad Power is a much more intelligent treatment of the subject.

This is an excellent collection, and I highly recommend it.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Haven – Season 1 – review

I got Haven Season 1 from the kids for Christmas, and K and I have pretty much inhaled it over the last week or so.

The series is (very) loosely based on a novella by Stephen King called The Colorado Kid. The TV series follows FBI special agent Audrey Parker who arrives in a small town called Haven in Maine, USA where people are exhibiting strange powers/abilities (a result of The Troubles – a phenomenon which has occurred before – and leaving people afflicted with powers they can barely control). After Parker, an orphan, finds a photo of a woman that looks exactly like her in the local paper’s archives from years before, she joins forces with a local police detective, Nathan Wuornos, to investigate the strange goings on and perhaps find out something about the woman she suspects is her mother.

This is a series that definitely gets better as it goes on. After the first few episodes I was feeling fairly ambivalent about it. The premise was interesting enough in the abstract and the characters were solid, but it felt a bit “freak of the week” and the solutions to the afflicted’s problems seemed a little fragile (for instance a blind man who can separate his shadow which proceeds to rampage around killing people is put in his house with all the windows blacked out so no light can get in. While I understand the concept, it seems like an impractical way to spend the rest of your life…).

However, as the story arc covering Parker’s search for her mother comes to the fore in the second half of the season the series really picks up. By the final episode K and I were hooked, and quite disappointed when we realised we couldn’t get season 2 straight away!

The scenery and landscape is beautiful. The series was mostly shot in Nova Scotia and it is obviously a lovely part of the world. It was shot on film, which makes for a beautiful cinematography.

The characters grow on you and the cliff hanger at the end was suitably tense. Parker is a good female lead – pretty kick arse all round.

There are only 13 episodes in season 1, so if you are going to try this show out then I recommend you commit to the whole thing before you make up your mind.

Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge.

I recently read Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts and liked it a lot. On the strength of that collection I decided to give Ms Roberts latest trilogy a try. Power and Majesty is book one of the Creature Court trilogy, a fantasy series set (going off the map at the front) in an alternate Earth, more specifically in an alternate Italy.

Teenagers Velody, Delphine and Rhian have come to the city of Aufleur (an alternate Rome?) to become an apprentice dressmaker, ribboner and florister respectively. One night Velody sees a young man (Garnet) fall from the sky and land in the street outside. He displays magical abilities and sees in her the ability to use the same magic. Freaking out, Velody agrees to give up her powers and give them to Garnet, then promptly loses her memory of the encounter.

12 years or so later, Garnet dies and Velody suddenly gets her power back. She enters the world of the Creature Court, where powered individuals fight attacks from the sky at night to keep the city safe (the normal citizenry are completely oblivious to both the danger and the Creature Court and indeed seem to spend their days celebrating an almost never ending series of festivals). The Court is a decadent place and the rest of the book describes Velody’s trials and tribulations as she attempts to navigate its somewhat murky waters.

The magic system is very interesting – practitioners are aligned to a particular animal and can split themselves into multiple instances of that animal (although I have to think that splitting your consciousness multiple ways to control your various animal vessels has got to at least involve a headache). The Creature Court is divided into a hierarchy depending on levels of power, with more powerful members having stronger abilities. I liked the way the magic was described and the complex web of interrelationships that make up the Court.

Sometimes the first book in a trilogy works well as a stand alone novel as well. This is not one of those books. It felt very much like the first in a series, and established the major characters without fully introducing the main antagonist (assuming you consider the danger from the sky as the main antagonist). If you considered this as a stand alone book, it would feel a little underdone. As a start of a trilogy it did a good job of whetting my appetite for the rest of the series.

I enjoyed the writing and the characters seemed well realised to me. The dialogue was great and the main characters seemed quite three dimensional. The minor characters were also excellent, with my personal favourite being the Sentinel Macready. The pacing was just about spot on and there was a good balance of violence, vicious politics and romantic elements (although I must say that the cover makes the book look like it is going to be mainly a romance and I wouldn’t describe it that way at all).

As someone with very little interest in the craft/fashion world there were aspects of Velody, Delphine and Rhian’s professional day jobs that were difficult to generate enthusiasm for. I suspect someone with a stronger interest would have got more out of those sections of the book.

The only bit of the story that bothered me a little was that there was a touch of the never-done-martial-arts-before-go-into-the-woods-for-a-week-and-become-a-kung-fu-master-accompanied-by-a-suitable-video-montage in how quickly Velody came into mastery of her powers. Given the painstaking time it took each of the three women to master the skills necessary for them to become successful in their chosen daytime professions, I thought there might be a little more of that ethos in mastering the magic as well. But that is a minor quibble, and at least it did serve to move the story along at a good pace.

(As an aside, I got this novel on the Kindle and there was some weirdness in how it rendered the text. The font size kept jumping around and for most of the book even the smallest font setting on the Kindle had very big text on the screen. But every now and then it would revert to normal for a few pages. I’ve read quite a few books on the Kindle, and this was the first time I’ve seen behaviour like this. Having said that, my Kindle is a couple of generations out of date – perhaps that had something to do with it).

Overall I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. Excellent fantasy generally, and if you particularly like dress making, ribboning and floristry then you’ll like it all the more!

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.