Review: The Sixth Faction

The Sixth Faction by Veronica Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

lol not the dummies already trying to tank this book’s rating.

In this house, though?

VRoth gets respect for life.

Review: Taipei Story

Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kuang continues her contemporary phase with a deep exploration of Chinese/Taiwanese identity all in the middle of a college trip for intensive language learning.

Review: We Chase Shadows

We Chase Shadows by Richard Osman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As expected, We Solve Murders is now officially a new series from Osman, who seems to be alternating between this series and The Thursday Murder Club for publication each calendar year. As another international mystery, this one goes to a lot of great places around the world, but it's really rooted in a mysterious incident in Málaga, Spain, in 2001. And unlike the first book, there's a lot fewer annoying and obnoxious side characters to go around, although We Solve Murders now has to contend with a certain in-universe fame, to the point where one of the detectives gets an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. I'm sure there'll eventually be a nice crossover episode, but we'll have to wait a while for that one, I'm sure.

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Review: Anger Is Only a Shadow

Anger Is Only a Shadow by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn’t know GR was finally giving us an option to give fractional star ratings, so this book is now the first to truly get an official fractional rating from me with what Gordon Ramsay would call “a very strong four point five.” Mixing poetry and prose as is her way, Acevedo returns to the YA sphere with a new story about Lil, who’s wound up on court ordered supervision with some very strict regulators down in old DC, all while she works to deepen connections with new friends, let go of the toxic old ones, and also to find out what the hell is happening to her brother Aldwin, who’s clearly having a severe crisis (it’s easy to guess what his particular condition is, but the story doesn’t confirm it until nearly the end.) Additionally, Acevedo puts in a lot of focus on Afro-Dominican culture as usual, but also on the Indigenous Salvadoran culture of Lil’s mom and her family, who still speak some Nahua in addition to Spanish. I really hope to see this one making a big splash at the literary awards the way Acevedo’s books usually do…

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Review: Scion

Scion by James Islington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

James Islington said that this little cyberpunk novella was a nice little diversion for him in between entries in his current epic fantasy saga, but for the rest of us, I guess not so much. Though it boasts the prettiest packaging of all of Islington’s books, especially getting the spredge treatment as is so common these days, I guess there’s a reason why the dust jacket copy is only in the protagonist’s POV and doesn’t really tell us much about the book itself. Because while it’s fast moving and action packed - both very unusual to hear about an Islington book - it’s also very indistinguishable from almost everything else in the genre, being far more oriented towards tropes than plot or characters. And yet, Islington seems ready to make a series out of this one. I probably won’t be reading, sadly.

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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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