Review: The Queen

The Queen by Nick Cutter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Yeah…that was a thirty-WTF pileup of a horror story if ever there was one. Promising to follow its narrative over a single day (in truth, though, it extends beyond that point), this book follows a high schooler in Cutter’s Ontario hometown as she finds a cell phone receiving texts from her friend who’s been missing for a month, telling her to go to different places to solve the mystery of what happened to her. Heavily inspired by a lot of rare and obscure scary stories, and also Thirteen Reasons Why - I suspect no one informed Cutter that Jay Asher was a creep and a half before he praised him in the acknowledgments - it’s a gripping book, but for a lot of seriously wrong and disturbing reasons. Still, though, I could almost see Zach Cregger executive producing a film adaptation, if not outright writing or directing it.

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Review: Ashes at the Altar

Ashes at the Altar by LaDarrion Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As expected, LaDarrion Williams concludes his debut trilogy with as much explosive action and magic as the students and faculty of Caiman U could ask for. Five hundred more sprawling pages of family drama and warring magical factions build to all the heads, at Caiman and at small towns across Mississippi and Alabama, and of course the Big Easy herself, and it truly does take it all for Malik, Taye, Dom, D Low, Savon, and all their friends and families to put things right for this generation and all their followers. To this trilogy, I now bid ave atque vale, but with that epilogue, I do hope to see a great follow up in the future, someday…

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Review: Empire

Empire by Sabaa Tahir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, thank you, Sabaa Tahir. Thank you for the heartbreak, and the complex plotting, and the heartbreak, and the ever darkening wartime morality, and the heartbreak, and the wide ranging perspectives of what it means to save the world, and did I mention the heartbreak? Because it’s not just the familial and romantic losses that set the stage here, it’s the death of a character I have a feeling you’ve been looking for a chance to kill off for years. Almost a decade at this point, even. And their time has finally come, and I for one am devastated about it. But if there’s one thing I can trust you, Tahir, to pull off, it’s wrapping everything up with just the right amount of sacrifice to our hearts and to our favorite characters. For now, I again bid this Empire ave atque vale, but I am once again ready to read whatever comes next, no matter what.

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Review: A Trade of Blood

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ana and Din return for their third mystery, and unlike with Robert Jackson Bennett’s other stories, it looks like this will not be a trilogy conclusion. And thank God for that, because each book in this saga has given us just another little taste of the secrets of the empire, and I hope to see at least one or two more books to extend deeper into its heart. But for now, we’re now progressing into a middle ring of the imperial land, with a most insidious mystery involving a pair of feuding families in the style of Romeo & Juliet - with Din’s previously unseen sister Fotia, Fo for short, now betrothed to a young man in one of those families - and some terrifying mind controlling fungus that isn’t supposed to infect humans, and yet. For this book, Bennett is giving us The Last of Us with a Clue expansion pack, and I’m really hoping this one gets another Hugo like the first book because it bloody deserves one.

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Review: Firestorm

Firestorm by Nevada Barr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..." And for this fourth Anna Pigeon novel, Barr couldn't decide on one or the other, so why not both? Set at Lassen Volcanic National Park, the book begins with a fire raging through the woods, quickly followed by a winter storm to trap Anna with several other wildland firefighters, one of whom is almost certainly a murderer. With its particular setting in far Northern California, it almost feels prophetic, having a wildfire so close to winter in the same region as the Camp Fire that devastated the town of Paradise in 2018. And unlike the previous book, this one, with its mountain setting and volatile weather, could easily be adapted into an episode of the USA/Crave series with a simple setting switch to Glacier National Park.

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Review: Ill Wind

Ill Wind by Nevada Barr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third Anna Pigeon novel returns to the same sort of environment as the first book in the series, this time set at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, where Anna comes to appreciate the remains of the old Native culture (this book still calls them by an old name now considered outdated, though it wasn’t seen as such in 1995), while also having to deal with a strange sickness befalling park visitors. With a more urgent case and its desert southwest setting, this book feels like it calls forward to some of those New Mexican thrillers of latter day Preston & Child. Though it’d be tough to adapt for the USA/Crave series unless they decided to move settings to Colorado in a future season, this one is going to stand out for me among Barr’s books by the time I’ve caught up on her backlist.

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Review: A Superior Death

A Superior Death by Nevada Barr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anna Pigeon’s second story trades in the Texan desert heat of Guadalupe Mountain National Park for the eerie chills of Isle Royale, and all the shipwrecks in Lake Superior surrounding the park. This story probably won’t be so easily adaptable for the USA/Crave TV series, since I can’t imagine a place as landlocked as Glacier would have too many shipwrecks to spare. But it’s a good shift in tone away from the first book, and shows the promise of how diverse the environments in this series will be as it covers park after park across the country.

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