Review: A Very Large Expanse of Sea

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a very different kind of book from Tahereh Mafi, being a contemporary romance - well, not exactly contemporary. It's set in 2002 and very steeped in its time period, with computers that felt like dinosaurs even back then, only one Harry Potter movie in theaters - and how was Shirin to know it was almost three hours long? - and costly cell phone minutes and texts, and no fancy touch screen models either.

Review: Darius the Great Is Not Okay

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Adib Khorram debuts strongly in this story of a biracial Persian boy coming to understand his own identity a bit better - not only as a Persian, but also as a depressed young man. There's a lot of talk in this book about what's passed down genetically, and in addition to certain deep aspects of Persian culture - Nowruz festivities, the game of Rook, daddy issues rooted in certain legends of warrior fathers accidentally killing warrior sons - Darius can also tell you that depression is genetic too, because he and his (white, German) dad both take medication for it.

Review: Villain

Villain by Michael Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who else thinks this cobra-head guy on the cover looks like he stepped out of the Stargate to lay waste to us all? Kinda like this or something.

Ralph Breaks The Internet: Oh My Disney, This Movie Is Awe And Some!

***THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW.***

"Hello hello
Let me tell you what it's like to be a zero, zero
Let me show you what it's like to always feel, feel
Like I'm empty and there's nothing really real, real
I'm looking for a way out!"
-Imagine Dragons

Let me also tell you that I'm very glad Imagine Dragons made "Zero" part of their brand-new album the way Fall Out Boy did for "Immortals" and Big Hero 6 roughly this time four years ago, because it totally deserves album inclusion for greater exposure...but I digress. The real genius of that song, though, is how it kinda low-key spoils one of the great themes of this really long-awaited Disney sequel, except not really. Because while it does give away that this one deals with loneliness - appropriate for a movie about the internet, no? - it doesn't say which major character has to grapple with this conflict, and in different ways, it's both our movie's stars who do. And along the way, it's a fun-tastic ride through cyberspace, but not at all without a serious emotional core like the best Disney movies.

Oh hai, Shank. I wanna get the right threads to cosplay as you next.

Review: Dry

Dry by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While we wait for Neal Shusterman to bring us the third and final Arc of a Scythe novel, here he collaborates with Jarrod Shusterman on a more contemporary, and yet more terrifying, dystopian kind of novel. Twenty Minutes In The Future, the California drought - particularly in the more arid Southland - has grown so bad that now all the taps have run dry, and in a period of two weeks or so, pure apocalyptic chaos erupts in and around Los Angeles. Up to and including some nice gated communities of Orange County. Though the book's a bit brought down by its weird array of multi-POVs that switch at an erratic rate - and the characters feel strangely little fleshed-out, with the exception of Jacqui and Kelton; but Henry is particularly annoying a character whom I grew tired of very quickly - it's very effective in its exploration of a dangerously plausible disaster. Even more dangerously plausible when the weather in California, IRL, is more broken than ever.

View all my reviews

Review: The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Honestly, it's weird how much every time I try a Kiersten White book, I never really get into it. Though this one's my favorite of hers that I've read so far - and I'm more than hopeful that the very forthcoming Slayer is quick to take over that throne - it's not saying much when all the other Kiersten White books I've read have really disappointed me. Not unlike my strange inability to really get into Holly Black's book, though I did rather like The Wicked King more than I expected. This book, though, is still somewhat disappointing, largely because as reverential and yet revolutionary as it is in its retelling of Frankenstein from Elizabeth's perspective, it does feel more than a little leaden in its pacing. But the twists, especially for someone who's read Frankenstein at least a dozen times now in various forms, are extremely unexpected and yet make all the sense. All in all, this latest from Kiersten White is a nice little stand-alone, a little slow, but legitimately very terrifying.

View all my reviews

The Crimes Of Grindelwald: "You Never Met A Monster You Couldn't Love."

***NO SPOILERS FOR THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD, BUT SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FANTASTIC BEASTS FILM, AS WELL AS SOME OF THE HARRY POTTER NOVELS, ABOUND HEREIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***

Over the years, it's become a running gag of sorts that J.K. Rowling will drop a whole new bit of long-hidden behind-the-scenes Potterlore on Pottermore, and virtually the entire internet rolls their collective eyes at her for having done so. Me, I'm enough of a lore fiend who's memorized so much trivia about the entire franchise that I've always dug it, and even had a private laugh at how much, to my perception, everyone else was just reaching for a reason to compete to see who could lay the sickest burn on one of my greatest inspirations. But this time I may have hit my limit? And not because of there being too much lore, but because I think this time, while sitting down to type up The Crimes of Grindelwald, JKR may have left her story bible behind in her other Scottish Highland mansion and saturated this screenplay, twisty as it was, with a few annoying continuity errors. So, yeah, in the twenty-four hours and counting since I've seen this movie, a lot of thoughts have percolated about it in my mind, all of it mixed. But I'm not about to toss the franchise in the trash heap, not by a long shot. It'd take a hell of a lot of Mooncalf shit on JKR's part to get me to jump on that bandwagon, and sure, we've never been closer to that hell of a lot. But for all the faults this movie's got, so much of it (*cough NEWT SCAMANDER MY AUTISTIC HERO cough*) shines jewel-bright like the Occamy's silver eggshells.

Everyone looking good and stylish. Except that bleached asshole on the upper right.

Review: Muse of Nightmares

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I could've done with a reread of Strange the Dreamer before tackling Laini Taylor's latest, especially given that the first book came out over a year and a half ago and I kinda forgot most of what happened. Well, to be fair, that first book was baroque as hell and, dare I say, a little self-indulgent in its weirdness. And in hindsight, it really does feel like a major case of Prolonged Prologue leading up to Muse of Nightmares, which I feel is the story Laini Taylor really wanted to tell. She just had to set up the world first, and maybe got a little carried away in the process. But here, we get a story that, while not entirely divorced of its predecessor's severely bloated overlength issues, still gives us some very high stakes indeed. Not for nothing am I reminded why I've used Taylor's books as comp titles in my own queries. Especially her Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, but this book especially plays out in a few ways like my own Blue Monday. No spoilers, of course, but I'll tell you that it's one of the sweetest tragic love stories I've seen yet this year - and I just saw The Crimes of Grindelwald, which reminds me that I've got to review that one next. I'll just close out with a little bit of hope that, like with V.E. Schwab's Vengeful, this one actually proves to be the end of a duology. I'm not sure my heart can take any more nastiness happening to these characters!

View all my reviews

Review: The Traitor Baru Cormorant

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this one on Alta's recommendation and my feelings about it are...decidedly mixed. I mean, she compared it to The Fifth Season - pretty high praise. And when the book opens up, it pretty well lives up to such a comparison by plunging the reader straight into a world where a distant empire enforces an oppressive regime, forcing its colonies to adhere to a certain unreasonable standard of racial and sexual "purity." No shit, they have institutionalized conversion therapy, among other horrifying tools in their bag. It's dark as hell, and that for me is a point where I find myself a little overwhelmed, in fact. Not least of which because they start with the conversion therapy - Baru, our protagonist, being gay and hailing from a land where the population is pretty much queer by default. And while I do feel that after a while, the characters devolve into more chess pieces than anything else - a case of the Ann Leckie effect where the author's better at writing machines than people - that's also pretty much the point. After all, a lot of the best dystopian narratives involve members of the oppressed underclass rising up and finding some way to infiltrate the privileged - Red Rising still being my top example, itself taking a ton of inspiration from Gattaca. This, though, is probably the only time I've seen someone use the power of math to pull it off, so props to Dickinson for that clever and original spin on the formula. Hopefully I'll be able to read the second book soon, but I'm also hoping The Monster Baru Cormorant is a much-needed improvement.

View all my reviews

Review: Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee

Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another ARC I've gotten at work, and here it's Jeff Zentner's third novel. He really wowed me with The Serpent King a few years back, getting five stars for feels alone just like Adam Silvera does with all his books thus far. Now, we get a good spiritual successor to Zentner's debut in Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee, which plays out like a sort of cross between The Serpent King and iCarly, if you can believe that.

Review: Kingdom of Ash

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like the title a lot more than I should. People who know me well enough will know why.

Though I'm not impressed with that bright yellow background on the cover. It's like they wanted it to look like someone got into the printer's room and went number one all over every copy. I mean, it looks better in person when the colors are a little more muted and the title shines more brightly and silver-like, but printed here on GR it looks a little...yuck.

And also...992 pages? What the bloody hell? This book is almost too thick to put on the shelves at work!

Review: The Luminous Dead

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, thank you, Harry, for bringing this ARC to my attention.

Harry told me today that he was really amazed by the level of talent displayed by Caitlin Starling in this, her debut novel, and I have to say he's very well on the mark. I can see the comparison to Annhiliation from the back-cover copy pretty easily, though it manages to be more minimalist - driven mostly by two characters, one of whom is predominantly offscreen in a mission-control role whom Harry compared to GLaDos, and whom I compare to Sally from Oblivion - as well as more straightforward - though not without a certain level of mind-screw - and more creepy. Dear sweet Jesus, Em.