Review: A Monsoon Rising

A Monsoon Rising by Thea Guanzon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thea Guanzon returns with the second part of her projected trilogy of some of the best romantasy in the business, earning her status once again for me as the genre’s true queen. Not SJM, not Yarros - I said what I said, Guanzon gets right what so many others haven’t. Inspired by both Southeast Asia and Reylo (and hell, there’s even a few characters who resemble other First Order villains, namely a rat-faced Hux analogue), Guanzon’s love story is a master class of sexual tension that transcends all the other enemies-to-lovers trend hoppers by light years. Goodreads has yet to include the third book in its listings yet, but rest assured, I will be reading. 100%.

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Review: Voyage of the Damned

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Sorry to say that this book, after all its immense hype from the BookTok machine among others, was a very quick DNF for me. I could only get about 30-40 pages in before I figured out I wasn’t gonna vibe with it, especially thanks to Ganymedes as the protagonist. I get that this is a society full of privileged little shits, and he’s the least privileged, from the least of the twelve lands, dealing wuth a father who hates everything about him from his weight on down, with no actual Blessing (because everyone’s doing the Encanto thing these days), but still, he’s so bloody obnoxious with his attempts at being a First Person Smartass that it makes it impossible for me to care about him. I will give him credit where it’s due and compliment his use of bisexual finger guns on the very first page, but that’s about as much grace as I can extend this book, because after that it was too much of a misfire for me to continue.

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Review: Spell of the Sinister: A Fairy Godmother Novel

Spell of the Sinister: A Fairy Godmother Novel by Danielle Paige
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though the fairytale retelling trend in YA has largely died out since its 2010s heyday, leave it to Danielle Paige to keep it alive. And it'll probably have a resurgence in the coming years thanks to the success of Wicked (though let's be real, Dorothy Must Die should've had a movie adaptation first.) But here, Paige brings her latest fairytale retelling to its conclusion with a fast-paced dual-POV-rivals story that, while not specifically Ozian, nevertheless wears its Wicked influences on its sleeve as proudly as one can expect from Paige. She's stuck to her stylistic guns pretty well over the years, and I'd really love to see where she goes next after this, because she's one of the few YA authors I'm still regularly keeping up with these days for many reasons.

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Review: Gardens of the Moon

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A coworker at my new job recommended this one after he saw me reading some Brandon Sanderson. I'd heard of Steven Erikson before, but never really paid attention to his work up till now. Here, I can see that he's sort of the missing link between Guy Gavriel Kay's parallel worlds, inspired by real history, and the diverse but grimdark fantasy settings of the new millennium. Thankfully, this book isn't really all that grimdark, but I can sort of see where it serves as a blueprint for the likes of Mark Lawrence or Joe Abercrombie, even more so than the obvious GRRM influences. It is decidedly...mid, overall, but the worldbuilding (helped by Erikson's professional experience in anthropology) is very interesting, with the different regions in this empire paralleling real world history but not exactly on a one-t0-one basis. I've already got the second book on order at the library in Vancouver, so we'll see how much further I get in this series in this new year.

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Review: Patriot: A Memoir

Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Finishing off a year that should’ve been a banner one for America and the world with some inspiration from a man who laid it all on the line and lost his life, but may his cause continue, in all the oppressive nations that need to see the light of justice and peace. In addition to the standard memoir prose, Navalny’s prison diaries form half the book, but the whole thing is rife with a classically wicked Russian humor - and who knew Navalny was such a comic book nerd? Not I. But I approve. As did, no doubt, the full row of Couvies (myself included) reading this book on a flight from SFO to PDX in either physical or ebook format. For a man uniquely skilled at cutting through the bullshit of fascism, Alexei Navalny, I salute thee.

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Review: Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie

Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I took a freshly purchased copy of this biography with me on my recent visit back home to California, and left it sitting on a tabletop at SFO for some other reader to find, should they be interested in a free book. My family always loved the late Christine McVie most of any of the three vocalists of the great Buckingham/Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac, but this biography covers her early Mac work as well, and also her pre-Mac time with the band Chicken Shack and how she had a background with almost as much mysticism as Stevie Nicks's image, thanks in part to her mum's claims of psychic and healing powers. It's a bit detached in style, but given that McVie was quite private and content to shun the spotlight in comparison to Buckingham and Nicks and of course Mick Fleetwood, that's not really much of a surprise.

Review: Wind and Truth

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dear Brandon Sanderson:

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU STORMING DID.

You took ten days of intense in universe buildup to a contest for the ages, for the world, for the Cosmere…and because it’s you, the man who wrote Mistborn as a targeted subversion of fantasy and chosen one tropes all along, you gave us your Infinity War. And unlike that infamous ending, we won’t be waiting a year for it to be resolved. It’ll be at least seven till we get the next adventure, even though some of our storming faves won’t be around for the next one after all the loopholes and Shadesmar and space-time-warpage and breaking of everyone’s fragile psyches.