Category Archives: Reviews

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The Mighty Fall At Last, They Are Dust Before The Wind

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THE HARSH CRY OF THE HERON

Lian Hearn (Hachette, 2006) ISBN: 13 978 0 733621 26 0

The Harsh Cry of the Heron is set some 14 years after the close of the original Tales of the Otori trilogy.  The story features Takeo’s three daughters to Kaede, Shigeko, Miki and Maya, and his illegitimate son Hisao, as well as Takeo and several other of the characters we met in the previous trilogy.  Takeo and Kaede have a united the Three Kingdoms as co-rulers, protecting the Hidden from persecution and driving the mercenarial Tribe into hiding.  Unfortunately, the seeds of conflict planted over the past 14 years are coming to a head.  Takeo must tread carefully if he wants to maintain everything he and his wife have struggled for.

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I Am A Holmes Fan. There, I’ve Said It.

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sherlock_holmes_watsonTHE DAY THEY MET
by Wendy C. Fries
MX Publishing, January 2015

I am a Holmes fan. There, I’ve said it.

Actually, perhaps I should confess that as a child I was far more immersed in the natural wonder of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and deeply scarred, to this day, by The Poison Belt. But the Sherlock Holmes stories made me happy too. Sure, there were no dinosaurs but we can’t have everything.

I still have my cheap plastic magnifying glass that accompanied me on many an adventure.* Unlike Holmes however, I investigated ant colonies far more frequently than crime scenes.

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Second Floor: Ladies Cocktail Frocks And Model Gowns

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The Women in Black Book Cover The Women in Black
Madeleine St John
Text Classics

It took me a long time to stop misreading the title of this novel as The Woman in Black. I think it’s because my to-be-read pile also contains Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White.* This missing plural meant that the introduction of a swathe of women in black in the early chapters left me a little bewildered but I quickly became so immersed in this deftly written tale I forgot the title and just went with the story. Continue reading

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The Ways Of The Australian Heart

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AUSTRALIAN LOVE STORIES
Cate Kenndey, Editor
Inkerman and Blunt, RRP $28.99
October 2014

australian_love_stories

 

Happy Valentine’s Day MRB Readers.

(Or just Happy Saturday if the previous phrase has raised your hackles, please relax, and know that the following review will not bring in any additional mentions of the love heart and rose day but it is a review of short stories about love so best be prepared for at least some mentions of Eros.)

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Existing In Heaven And Earth

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BRILLIANCE OF THE MOON

Lian Hearn (Hodder, 2004, ISBN: 0-7336-1564-3)

Brilliance of the Moon is the last in Lian Hearn’s original Tales of the Otori trilogy.  It takes place shortly after the conclusion of Grass for his Pillow.  Takeo and Kaede have married in secret, against the wishes of their protector, the warlord Arai Zenko.  Otori and Tribe forces both threaten Takeo and he is forced to flee with Kaede to Maruyama.  Events conspire against them and the pair, after setting up their ambitious plans for the future, are separated.

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Charm & Genius

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annansy_storiesANNANCY STORIES

Pamela Colman Smith (1899) ISBN: 0-9769612-2-9

Pixifire Reprint Edition

You may not have ever heard of Pamela Colman Smith but I would bet anything you care to wager that you know her work. Pamela Colman Smith is the artist responsible for the most famous and widely used of all Tarot decks, the Rider-Waite Deck. It’s the deck you think of when you think of Tarot and Pamela did a lot of innovative things with it. In particular she was the first person that we know of who added illustrative scenes to the numbered cards. Prior to her version the wands and cups and so on were just a set of wands and cups and so on, much like a modern deck of playing cards.

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The Spring Rain Is A Thread Of Pearls*

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GRASS FOR HIS PILLOW

Lian Hearn (Hodder, 2003) ISBN: 0 7336 1563 5

Taking up directly after the events of Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass for his Pillow finds Kaede in a state of hypnotic sleep and Takeo working for the ninja-like Tribe which has claimed him for their own.  Neither is now happy with their lot.  Takeo has sworn himself to the Tribe, as well as to an up-and-coming warlord, but desires only to honour Otori Shigeru’s wishes that he should claim leadership of the Otori clan.  Kaede, meanwhile, longs for Takeo.  She is certain he will return to her, yet has her own doubts. Continue reading

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This Lone Boy Sets Off On A Journey

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ACROSS THE NIGHTINGALE FLOOR (TALES OF THE OTORI BOOK ONE)

Lian Hearn* (Hodder, 2002) ISBN: 0 7336 1565 1

As a child and teenager, for no discernible reason, I was a total weeabo.  I loved Japan.  I loved Japanese clothing, I loved learning about Japanese language and culture, and I was determined to go to Japan as soon as I could.  I don’t know where this obsession originated.  The obvious contenders are Sailor Moon and Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, a tv series and book respectively, which were likely my first encounters with Japan–even though I believe the latter was written by an American.  I’ve been to Japan twice now, and I’ve also made a conscious effort to ramp down my adoration because I’ve learned that fetishising cultures like that is not a cool or respectful thing to do.  Nonetheless, Across the Nightingale Floor, first in the Tales of the Otori trilogy**, represents a perfect union of three of my great loves–Japanese culture and history (albeit in a fictionalised Japan-like society), fantasy, and beautiful writing.

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Strange Wrecks Turning Silently In The Velvet Dark

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spacewreckSPACEWRECK: GHOSTSHIPS AND DERELICTS OF SPACE

Stewart Cowley (ISBN 0 600 32990 9)

One of the great joys of being my age is that the books I remember with fond nostalgia from childhood libraries have been appearing in secondhand bookstores for a few years now. These dimly remembered tomes are either library cast-offs or the result of persons older than me culling their shelves I suppose, but I am happy to be the beneficiary either way. I was recently rooting through the shelves of a secondhand bookstore in small town New Zealand to discover my favourite of Stewart Cowley’s Terran Trade Authority books. Yes, I realise I could have bought a copy online long ages ago, but that undermines the joy of unexpected discovery now doesn’t it? Continue reading

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We Russians, We Have Only Our Winter

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DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

Boris Pasternak (trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harai, Vintage, 2002 (first published Collins and Harvill, 1958)) ISBN: 9780099448426

Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago has been lauded for almost 60 years as one of the greatest love stories of all time.  An epic set during the Russian Revolution, it saw its author awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and has been adapted several times for the screen in both Russian and English.  With the weight of its renown, but without much notion of what the story was actually about, I looked forward to falling in love with this book.  Unfortunately, I didn’t.

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      THE FOUR BOOKS Yan Lianke (Text, 2015) ISBN: 9781922184487, RRP AU$29.99 It’s been a while since I read a book that left me with the single thought, “what the fuck?”  Strange as it might sound, I don’t mean this in a negative way.  It’s good when a book provokes thought … Continue reading