Review: Iron Gold

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As always when I read a Pierce Brown book...bloodydamn goryhell.

Maybe Iron Gold was more of a 4.5 for me, but I'll round it up to a full-on five-star because A) it's by one of my all-time favorite authors and he deserves all the raves; and B) Brown's style evolves so much compared to the original trilogy, expanding the scope steadily as he always does with each successive book he writes.

I was already thankful when I read Morning Star for the first time two years ago and Brown then announced the start of a new trilogy to continue the story ten years later. At first I thought we'd be gone from Darrow's head completely, but no, he returns as one of four POV characters along with Lysander au Lune, Ephraim ti Horn (formerly Holiday's brother-in-law), and Lyria of Lagalos, whom I remember Brown saying (when I saw him in Mountain View with Andy Weir) was his favorite of the new POVs to write. I can see why - she's a welcome return to the world of the Red class, showing just how little the Rising has done for them in practice and poking all the holes in Darrow's best-laid plans. (Ironic that I say that since Brown also claimed in Mountain View that he pretty much pantsed the original trilogy and attempted the same with Iron Gold, but has since resorted to outlining the new trilogy because of the logistical difficulties of pantsing a four-POV novel.) Lyria being dark-skinned (I code her as black, but I could be wrong) helps raise the book's inclusivity factor in terms of POV characters, as does Ephraim, who is gay. And along with the guy in the Mountain View audience who asked Brown about his handling of LGBTQ+ characters and got a very thoughtful answer re: how to create a character marginalized by today's standards but not so much in-universe, this bi reader gives Brown his props on this front.

Multiple POVs are always a tricky situation to handle. I've seen more in individual books by George R.R. Martin and Rick Riordan, but I'm talking third-person here. Brown, though, does something I've never seen before, and frankly I'm more than a bit bummed one of my own planned manuscripts will for sure not be the first to include it - four first-person POVs, all from characters from a very diverse array of circumstances, all from characters of various degrees of likability. Darrow and Lyria, I think, automatically get the most likability because of their sympathetic Red backgrounds - though Darrow, having all but become a Gold, is shown through actions and symbolism to have become, in some ways, as terribly flawed as many who were born Gold. Ephraim, a disillusioned revolutionary, pops off the page because of how much his ongoing grief informs his slant on things - that, plus the fact that his parts of the story are essentially a space heist movie. Lysander, for me, is the weakest of the four POVs, the one to which, largely due to his privileged background, I'm least connected - and which, to me, feels the least connected to the other three, particularly Darrow. That said, though, his sections of the story bear one of the book's strongest themes overall - decadence falls sooner or later, and what matters is how one makes use of one's reduced circumstances following said fall.

But it's not just decadence that can fall. Idealism can fall too, especially when perpetual war continues to ravage all your universe. Ten years on from Morning Star and the Rising is still struggling, sandwiched as it is between two powerful forces who won't give up their territories easily, nor will they stop fighting each other with the more moderate forces caught in the middle. More than ever, Brown's reflection of world politics - and especially American politics - is scorchingly relevant.

Iron Gold is a long ride - 600 pages, the longest Brown has given us yet. It's high on action, high on intrigue, and especially near the end when he deploys a couple of cliffhangers that verge on the Aveyardian like none of his since Golden Son, high on feels. I can spoil NOTHING here, but be warned - the ending of this book will leave you crying just a bit, and not even from one of the deaths! (Well, maybe one of them, but again, no spoilers.) And though this new trilogy may be more tightly plotted than pantsed, I still wish you best of luck in attempting to parse Brown's endgame.

Per aspera ad astra.

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Review: Persepolis Rising

Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I can thank Blake the Book Eater for popping in and commenting on my reading status for helping raise my appreciation of this seventh Expanse book a little. Sure, it's more of a 3.5, but because it's a noticeable improvement on the previous two books (both of which I found too long and oddly pedestrian at times), I'll give it an official 4. Persepolis Rising feels like a welcome return to the quality level I came to expect after Cibola Burn, focusing a little less on this Solar System and expanding the scope out to systems beyond Sol. Especially Laconia, a very interesting place, if I do say so myself (and that's with as few spoilers as possible.) Not only does the scope expand back to the level I know the Corey team is capable of, but the significant time skip since Babylon's Ashes helps as well, allowing this book to serve almost like a soft reboot going into the promised final third of the saga. Two more full novels to go, I'm thinking - and hoping that they fully validate my journey on this interstellar voyage.

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Review: The Boy Who Saw

The Boy Who Saw by Simon Toyne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second Solomon Creed novel, like its predecessor, is a pretty marked shift in tone from previous Simon Toyne works. While The Searcher had a very Jack Reacher-esque contemporary Western style, The Boy Who Saw, though continuing the light speculative elements from Book 1, is about as different from Book 1 as it gets, a little more like Steve Berry did a collaboration with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Taking we the readers to France and plunging us deep into a Holocaust-rooted conspiracy, with more than a few long hard looks at the neo-Nazis keeping racism alive, Toyne does an expert job balancing these supremely distasteful elements with smaller, more personal scenes of Solomon Creed bonding with Marie-Claude and her son Leo, a comic-book fanboy in the making whose synesthesia forms a superpower all his own.

This book, though the second in the series, is largely standalone and comprehensible to anyone who hasn't read The Searcher. Aside from a few sprinklings of more sin-eater kind of details throughout - particularly near the end, just like in the first book - The Boy Who Saw forms what I'm hoping to be a good bridge between two great books in a trilogy. Or perhaps Solomon Creed won't be simply a trilogy like Sanctus was. Who knows?

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Review: SuperMutant Magic Academy

SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another one for my book club at work, and this was a bit of a strange one to rate for me. Knowing that it all began as a webcomic helped matters, because when I started to realize that almost every page was its own brief story largely disconnected from each adjacent page (with a few exceptions, most of these loaded more towards the back of the book when there's about fifteen pages or so of a continuous conversation and some epic action), that's when I realized that maybe this book would take a bit of a different kind of appreciation. Maybe it's not entirely my style, but for what it's worth, SuperMutant Magic Academy is a good piece of light reading. A bit dark in its sense of humor, but also pretty incisive with its glimpses into the meaning of life, especially through a series of teenage lenses each more jaded than the last.

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Review: End of Days

End of Days by Susan Ee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy crap, this was an intense little finale. In this final entry to the trilogy, we, along with Penryn and Raffe, are literally taken to Hell and back. And all of that leads up to a nasty final battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. There's been a lot of GG Bridge action in the movies lately, but this one takes the cake away from all of those, because of the way it begins (talent show, anyone? And it's especially funny because the place where the talent show is held, the old Stanford Theater on University Avenue Palo Alto, I drive past it going to work now!) and also the arrival of the biggest, and worst, weapons Uriel's devised. In more ways than one.

In any case, I'm sad to see this series go - but hopefully Susan Ee has more wild and wacky adventures in her imagination to share with us. So, with that, ave atque vale, Penryn and Raffe!

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Review: Morning Star

Morning Star by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bloodydamn goryhell.

Red Rising mashed up all the games: Ender's Game, The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones.

Golden Son went for more all-out Thrones.

And finally, the (original) trilogy reaches its conclusion in Morning Star, best described as the unholy and freakishly, outrageously awesome love child of Star Wars and Thor. No, seriously. The Roman inspiration for the first two books takes a backseat throughout much of this one to make room for some seriously gnarly futuristic Norse mythology as we get more into the world of the Obsidians. Blood and guts and metal fly thick throughout the pages of this book, all 500-plus pages.

Released as it was in a year when Fury Road was up for Best Picture (which it should've won, gorrammit!), this book is a sign that the high-action revival isn't just limited to film.

I'm so glad to hear that Pierce Brown isn't done with this universe yet - not now that Iron Gold is starting a whole new trilogy. However, as for Darrow's original solo story, we're finally full circle with it, and thus I can bow to Brown's awesomeness as I wish this series ave atque vale, and...

Per aspera ad astra.

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Review: World After

World After by Susan Ee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off...that cover. I like it a lot, way more than the Angelfall cover. The bat-wings are much more evocative and memorable than the traditional bird-wings (which makes sense given that these books have angels killing us all and being in-general quite unspeakably rude, if I do say so myself.) Not to mention it's perhaps the cover that best reflects the series in general, in my opinion. I am also happy to report that this book is way better than the first one, for the simple reason that it's darker, more visceral, and more pure High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Sure, maybe at times the storyline drags a bit, but Penryn and Paige and Raffe are just too cool to not love, and the monster-movie moments...let's just say it's no wonder Sam Raimi gave this series a lot of love and his blurb is on the back covers of the whole trilogy now. As with Angelfall, World After is a must-read for everyone!

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Review: Golden Son

Golden Son by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The sequel to Red Rising subtracts a lot of the Ender's Game and Gladiator elements, but retains many of the elements of The Hunger Games (imminent revolution across this pseudo-Roman future society) and Game of Thrones (families at war, either winning or dying with no middle ground) that made the first one so good. And, just like its predecessor, it keeps up the war themes in such ways that it manages to feel scarily more relevant in this post-American world, a war of the rich going at each other and still using all the lower classes for their own ends like nothing else matters.

Really, truly, it's hard as hell to believe Brown wrote this all at such a relatively tender age, and yet, he did. Proves that he's truly a better human than the rest of us.

Oh, and Sevro. In this book, we are all Sevro. And Darrow too, but Sevro as well. No bloodydamn kidding.

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Review: The Demon Crown

The Demon Crown by James Rollins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Scary coincidence that the day after an accidental Emergency Alert went out to the citizens of Hawaii that ballistic missiles were coming, I read this book, in which a major biological threat gets Sigma Force seriously contemplating nuking the same islands for quarantine purposes.

For the thirteenth Sigma Force novel, Rollins seriously pulls out all the stops, giving us monster-movie horror on the level of Jurassic Park (the original, or Jurassic World, that is), or Alien. It's even more terrifying for me because the main threat in this book, genetically engineered parasitic killer wasps, is one of my biggest fears. So even now, as I type this review, I'm itching like nobody's business. But for jacking up the monster-movie game to levels worthy of a Marvel movie budget, and giving Sigma super-personal stakes (especially for Gray and Seichan), and especially for those gnarly as hell wasp-POV chapters, Rollins here presents the best Sigma book in a while. Best since Eye of God, at least, if not The Doomsday Key or even Map of Bones, which is still my favorite. Scary this book may have been for too many reasons, but I managed to devour it all in one sitting. That's how good it is, my friends.

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Review: Whichwood

Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I first read Furthermore, I said that I was eagerly awaiting a potential sequel to that book, as well as the #ownvoices Persian fantasy Tahereh Mafi had also promised. Naturally, Mafi being Mafi, she couldn't help but get us a book that could be both - and Whichwood delivers very well as both. Slightly less surreal than its predecessor owing to its nature being less of an Alice in Wonderland retelling, this book is still no less richly detailed, and of course it's heavy on fourth-wall breakage just like Furthermore was.

I was a little confused about some aspects of the world-building - like, if Whichwood is a Persian-inspired fantasy realm somewhere close by Fernewood, why does Whichwood have an equally English-sounding name? (Unless Translation Convention is in effect? Or perhaps there's enough cultural cross-pollination between Fernewood and Whichwood to explain it, likely given their apparent proximity and the fact that Alice and Oliver can communicate with Laylee with next to no difficulty.)

That said, though, Whichwood, while pretty whimsical, is also a darker and more thought-provoking story than Furthermore. Of course, a lot of this owes to Laylee's job, washing the dead. And also to Alice and Oliver's initial considerable revulsion at the thought of lending her a hand in her duties as mordeshoor, for which the narrator takes a few opportunities to teach the reader that, maybe, helping others should be done out of the goodness of your own heart and not with the expectation of a reward. And Laylee needs to learn a good lesson too, that she shouldn't be so proud as to insist on working alone. After all, this job is literally killing her...but Mafi's not about to let Death take her without a fight, is she?

A special mention goes to Benyamin, largely because of his buggy little powers. I think that's a sign of Ransom Riggs' influence on Mafi - I mean, it can't be a coincidence she describes him as "peculiar," no?

Whichwood helps do for Persian views of mortality and the afterlife what The Book of Life and Coco do for Day of the Dead, and on that level, I highly recommend it. Though you could do with reading Furthermore first, this book's just standalone enough to jump into it headfirst instead (and don't worry, Mafi's got you covered with the occasional humorous footnote to recap the first book if you need it.)

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Review: The Ghost Brigades

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So this one's a sequel to Old Man's War...but a very loose one, set in the same universe but exploring all-new characters with much of the same tech and of course a similar Scalzi sense of humor. It's just too bad that rather than keep on going with the story of the titular "Old Man" - though I understand he returns in the third book - Scalzi decided to take a detour, exploring a whole new set of characters who just plain lack John Perry's charisma. I mean, it makes sense in the end, when the storylines really start to come together and set up for a most interesting new spin on things in the third book. But overall, The Ghost Brigades, smart though it may be, feels like just so much Sophomore Slump from Scalzi, enough that I almost don't want to keep going on the rest of the series. But again, for Perry, I'm gonna order Book 3 at the library as soon as possible.

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Review: Unearthed

Unearthed by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank God this is going to be the first in a series, because after that ending, if there wasn't to be a sequel, I'd be enraged as all get-out. Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's latest collaboration, while set in the Starbound universe - as evidenced by a mention of Francois LaRoux - is a little closer to Kaufman's collaboration with Jay Kristoff, The Illuminae Files, in style. It's a ton more action-packed, though not sacrificing any of the romantic elements. Maybe a little too much on the insta-love end of the scale, but Jules and Mia at least admit it's more insta-lust than anything else. Especially Jules, making him oddly super-relatable to me. We also get a little more diverse here than in previous Kaufman and/or Spooner works, Jules being black - well, technically, he's described as having brown skin and curly hair, but I headcanon him as black unless told otherwise.

And best of all, the storyline - basically the love child of Indiana Jones and Prometheus. I'm not kidding, especially with that unholy cliffhanger of an ending - which, hopefully, won't lead to an Indiana Jones and Alien: Covenant hybrid! I bought this book practically sight unseen on Monday just to have it in time for getting it signed on Wednesday, and let me tell you, it's very much worth the purchase price. I'm putting this on my official Staff Pick tag at work the next time I come in: "BUY THE HELL NOW."

Onward, if you dare.

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Review: Red Rising

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nearly four years after first reading Red Rising, I've returned to this trilogy, this time with my own copy, which I'm hoping to get signed by Pierce Brown himself next week. Rereading this first book has allowed me to discover a ton of details and moments that I managed to either miss the first time around or forget all about, somehow. But thank God I've gone and re-read this book, because it's bloodydamn awesome and compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking. If you haven't read this story of Darrow and Eo and Sevro and Mustang and all the other awesome people Pierce Brown gifted us way back in 2014, then as I say on my official Staff Pick tag at work, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

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Review: War of the Cards

War of the Cards by Colleen Oakes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a strange case, this book. I really don't know why I gave the first Queen of Hearts book five stars anymore - I mean, I liked the book, I thought it was fun, but five stars' worth of fun? More like four, maybe. Certainly not as down in quality as the sophomore slump that was Blood of Wonderland. And now, here we get the trilogy's conclusion in War of the Cards, which, like its predecessor, actually lacks a little in what its title promises...but overall doesn't lose the fast-moving, addictive quality that made me really power through the first two books.

What's really odd about this book is how much I like it, since it really plays with expectations perhaps a little too much. The way it links back to the original Alice in Wonderland story is...rather unexpected, especially when we find out that Lewis Carroll's Alice is nothing like the one in this "real" Wonderland. To be fair, though, that makes sense given how different some other characters are from their Carroll counterparts - Cheshire, especially, comes to mind. Like Blood of Wonderland, the Native American-esque Yurkei feature very prominently, and their function in the story does, again, feel a little too Daenerys-ally-ish...but thankfully, Oakes makes it a point of avoiding writing them into seriously problematic plotlines, one of which would have been potentially caused by the book's real villain. There's also a very surprising scene in which Dinah catches Wardley in bed with a woman - thus subverting how Blood implied that he was gay, and while I did feel a little bit queerbaited at first, checking back against Blood, it's clear that Wardley never actually said he was gay, just...not in love with Dinah. Reading between the lines is all well and good, but refrain from assuming, y'know? (That said, though, even though Queen of Hearts was one of the next books in my system of hand-selling choices for this day, I decided to put off the promotion for a bit.)

Maybe the ultimate ending that Oakes gives us feels a little too much like the unholy love child of Mockingjay and Gone Girl, but I have to give her credit where credit is due, and she deserves credit for flipping my expectations - almost all of them, in fact - on their heads.

To the Queen of Hearts trilogy, I now say ave atque vale.

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Review: Supergirl: Age of Atlantis

Supergirl: Age of Atlantis by Jo Whittemore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pairing nicely with Barry Lyga's middle-grade offering The Flash: Hocus Pocus is this, Jo Whittemore's Supergirl: Age of Atlantis, a relatively bite-sized piece of fun geared for a middle-grade readership, but easily digestible for Supergirl fans of all ages. I actually liked this book somewhat more than Lyga's book, though, because even while Lyga made a few improvements on the various Flash characters compared to their TV series counterparts, there was still too much corny WestAllen stuff for me to recommend the book as wholeheartedly as I would have liked.

Not so with Whittemore, though, who not only gives just about every character from Supergirl circa Season 2 (the peak of the show's quality thus far, mostly thanks to Season 3 being too grimdark just like that same-numbered season of The Flash) the spotlight time they deserve, but also gives us some seriously bonkers metahuman action to rival Supergirl the TV series at its best. And also some much-needed (especially, again, given the dreadful plot developments of Season 3) Karamel moments, which I greatly enjoy because it's my number-one canon Arrowverse ship by far (the only ship I ship more being SuperFlash.) I'm not kidding - this book is worth buying just for one scene alone. The scene where Mon, having developed shapeshifting powers, becomes an identical copy of Kara. You can bet Chris Wood would've had a blast acting that scene opposite Melissa Benoist.

At least this time, unlike with Hocus Pocus, I know right away to expect a cool sequel: Curse of the Ancients. Which, yes, I'm going to read as soon as it comes out, as I will with Lyga's (as yet unnamed, as far as I know) Hocus Pocus sequel.

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Review: The Becoming of Noah Shaw

The Becoming of Noah Shaw by Michelle Hodkin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So...I'm actually gonna confess that as a Michelle Hodkin stan till my dying day, this book, her long-awaited return after three years, actually kinda disappointed me. I mean, I love Mara Dyer's trilogy, and even after rereading and noting a few problematic aspects, they're still terrific for me, especially as secret influences on my own work. And kudos, of course, to Hodkin for making me love Noah Shaw even though he's a character who, by rights, I shouldn't.

Unfortunately, giving Noah his own book to follow up from the original trilogy actually isn't the best idea. Not that this isn't a good book - it's Michelle Hodkin, how could it not be? It just pales in comparison to Hodkin's previous work, not only because Noah's a less layered and nuanced protagonist than Mara, but also because this book, by virtue of its very existence, undoes a lot of the goodwill left by the ending of The Retribution of Mara Dyer, especially when it comes to some certain Happy Ending Overrides which leave me feeling more than a bit dismayed. And it's somehow even darker than the original trilogy, focusing as it does on a spate of suicides among the carriers - which of course opens up old wounds for Noah, literally and figuratively, and it's very disheartening to watch his struggles so up close and personal.

But while the story itself isn't the best follow-up to the original trilogy, The Becoming of Noah Shaw is no less compulsively readable, and that, for me, is the reason why I'm still giving it a decent rating of four stars. Really more of a 3.5, but I'll round up to a 4 because of the ending cliffhangers, in particular.

Whenever the second Noah Shaw book comes along, you'll be damned right I'm going to pick it up as soon as possible. Just maybe with a tad bit more trepidation this time.

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Review: Not Your Villain

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The follow-up to Not Your Sidekick, like its predecessor, takes a little time getting started, which is especially noticeable given its short length and that almost a good third of it is devoted to kick-starting the main plot. But again, when that plot kicks off and re-explores the first book's theme of the gray morality lines between heroes and villains - and the artificial in-universe manufacture thereof - that's where Not Your Villain really starts to shine.

That, plus the fact that we get even more LGBTQIAP+ rep to go around. No, seriously. Not only do we get a trans lead in Bells (with Lee making it a point of being sensitive around certain aspects of his character - for instance, she deliberately alludes to Bells not being his birth name, but never actually deadnames him), but we also meet a minor enby character, Cal, who introduces themself with their pronouns as well as their name and gets everyone else following suit. And Emma, in this book, questions her romantic orientation - and since she's set to be the lead character of the upcoming third and final novel, Not Your Backup, that'll effectively complete Lee's trend of having each book led by someone with a completely different combination of racial and queer identities.

All in all, another great story from C.B. Lee. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for Book 3 - or for Seven Tears at High Tide, which I'm still trying to get my library to order.

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Review: Nyxia

Nyxia by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Actually more of a 3.5 on this one, but the flaws are just pronounced enough that I'm rounding it down. Not that Nyxia is a bad book, and certainly not a bad debut. Certainly not with the level of diversity Reintgen writes in, especially appropriate given the futuristic setting. (And while I'm at it, wasn't there some Twitter nasty showing their ass over the diversity in this book? But I digress.) Perhaps the greatest issue I had with this book, though, was that the plot sometimes moved way too quickly, to the point where I felt like important moments may have been skipped and/or lost in the shuffle. But when the high-speed plot combines with terrific action and suspense, that's where Reintgen's skill really shines through, and more than helps explain how this book merited blurbs from both Victoria Schwab and Jay Coles.

Oh, but the one biggest flaw of all...

...WTF was that ending?

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Review: The Philosopher's Flight

The Philosopher's Flight by Tom Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The comparisons to Deborah Harkness and especially to Lev Grossman make a lot of sense for Tom Miller's debut, for which I was lucky enough, in my duties as a Stanford Bookstore associate, to have acquired an ARC. Though less romantic than Harkness and (mercifully) less grimdark than Grossman, The Philosopher's Flight is a well-crafted piece of alternate history that nevertheless doesn't feel quite so alternate. More like reflecting the present day back to a hundred years ago, and showing a sorta post-steampunk world where gender and racial equality have made considerable strides, but still has too long a way to go. Because of course there are racists and sexists out there to crap on everyone else just because they feel inadequate (as they should.) Maybe the book doesn't deal with all these social ills as neatly as it could - in fact, it feels like it keeps the action going almost all the way to the end, but then the ending itself is very abrupt and fails to tie in well to the "recounting my past exploits to my child" framing device in the prologue. I'm hoping there'll be at least one sequel just because of how generally incomplete the resolution of this one feels.

But the social-commentary game is strong with this one, as is the use of magic that resembles a lot of 21st-century tech - like a sand-powered message board that basically sounds like Etch-a-Sketch text messages (right down to the frequent misspellings on the part of the user.) And the political game, with a few digs at the Republican Party (for in-universe straying away from being the Party of Lincoln, but it can so easily apply to today's Republicans as well.)

At the very least, it's more than a bit disconcerting to see all the characters refer to recent years as '04, '98, etc. and know that it's all supposed to be set 100 years ago, almost exactly. Which, I suppose, was Miller's point entirely.

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Review: The Empress

The Empress by S.J. Kincaid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me a little while, after picking this book up at long last, to recall some of the details of its predecessor, The Diabolic. Between looking at my own review and others, I was able to pick enough up to go forward in this book, which is a good thing because while The Empress is its own beast of action and intrigue and thrills, you do kinda need to have read The Diabolic first.

However, while this book does tend to flag just a bit in the middle - thus keeping me from giving it the five-star rating I really want to give it - it does have one advantage over its predecessor. While The Diabolic was carefully constructed to work equally well as a standalone or as the start of a new series, The Empress makes its status as part of a series very, very clear, especially towards the end when Kincaid slathers on some twists that I didn't see coming and, frankly, am still hoping are somehow fake. Though it's not exactly an Aveyardian ending, it combines just enough aspects of the endings of Glass Sword and King's Cage both to be a diabolical style all its own, a uniquely unduplicatable form of enraging ending which I will now call the "Kincaidian cliffhanger."

"Unduplicatable," but for how long?

(I'll just wait for the likes of Victoria Schwab or Leigh Bardugo to ask Kincaid to hold their beer.)

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Review: The City of Brass

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Aimal Farooq told me this book exists, I was confuzzled because my friend Skies is working on a book of the same name and putting it up on Wattpad. But no, this book and Skies' book are most certainly not the same.

And given Aimal's penchant for scary djinn stories (the Aimal Specials, I call them), I absolutely needed this book yesterday. If my library hadn't ordered it in time for me to put a much-needed advance hold, I might've have to shed my usual Spidey- and/or Flash-personas and go full Oliver Queen on their asses.



But no, thankfully, I didn't.

And I'm very glad to have given The City of Brass, the first in this planned #ownvoices Muslim historical fantasy trilogy, my first official review of 2018. Really, it's more of a 4.5 for me because it tends to slow down in the middle or so, but the screaming cliffhanger ending and revelations, as well as the richly detailed world-building magnificence, and of course Nahri's and Ali's (albeit limited third-person) POVs livening things up and adding a certain amount of YA crossover appeal. Heck, this book's take on djinn and djinn tribes has made me look back at my old childhood favorite Children of the Lamp series, which now feels a little half-baked in comparison in terms of world-building. Chakraborty gives us so many tribes with their own unique rules and customs and powers and attributes, and while it's sometimes hard to keep track of all the factoids, it's just yet another testament to her superior writing ability that makes me go all-out with this five-star rating. That, plus how much the book's anti-bigotry themes resonate so strongly.

So far, all we know is that the second book will be called The Kingdom of Copper. And that I'm going to have to jump on ordering it as soon as my library allows me to. And that until then, I'm going to have to hand-sell this book to as many Stanford bookstore customers as possible.

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