Review: Aurora Rising

Aurora Rising by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff have once again put their heads together on what's promising to be a pretty epic new YA sci-fi trilogy. Like with The Illuminae Files, it's got a few aspects to it that make it pretty experimental in its epicness - not so much in terms of playing around with the rules of prose and layout, but more in how much K&K shuffle around between no less than seven distinct POVs throughout the story. My personal favorite, though, being Finian just because of how unrelentingly bi he is. (Tbh I headcanon most of the main cast as some level of bi, because before the official cover of this book came along, the logo was written in bi colors if I remember correctly.)

Review: With the Fire on High

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Elizabeth Acevedo's second novel proves to be just as brilliant and readable as The Poet X, but it also proves that Acevedo is about the furthest thing from a one-trick pony you can get. Radically different in so many ways from its predecessor, With the Fire on High is just as fast-moving a prose novel as Acevedo's earlier verse novel, and just as emotionally involving too. And just as artistic, though artistic in cooking as opposed to poetry. (With hints of magical realism too, as in the scene where Emoni talks about the day of her very clumsy, awkward, and disappointing first time, and she burned the sugar when she was cooking later, and ever since then her maduros have always made people inexplicably weep.) And less explosive too - while there's conflict involved, particularly between Emoni and her ex-boyfriend/baby daddy Tyrone, it's not nearly as rage-inducing as when X's mom acts so vile and horrible in the name of Jesus. In fact, Acevedo makes it a point of emphasizing that being Catholic shouldn't necessarily equal being ultra-conservative and/or abusing your child for not conforming to such strict standards. Emoni's 'Buela, described as a "soft Catholic," is devout but not controlling, giving Emoni the room to properly mature and make her own decisions, and fully endorsing her creativity in life - especially in the kitchen. Acevedo's one of the best in the business right now, and this latest novel of hers, touching and life-affirming as it is, is all the proof you need of that fact.

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Review: Nocturna

Nocturna by Maya Motayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After meeting Maya Motayne along with Victoria Aveyard last month in San Jose, I figured it was high time I got around to reading Nocturna. Which proved a little more challenging than I would've hoped, since my library didn't get ahold of it and I wound up having to special order from Marin County. Though at least we got a couple of copies of this book at my work, so there's that. But as for Motayne's debut, it's a pretty good one. Though close to 500 pages long, it doesn't feel that long due to its relentlessly fast pace throughout. And as I expected after hearing Motayne in conversation with Aveyard, it's smart and on point in its #ownvoices social commentary, with emphasis on people's cultures being innately tied to them - and manifesting, in this case, through the ability to perform magic in one's native language, which is why the former colonizing forces of Englass tried (and ultimately failed) to stamp out the Castallan language. There are more countries on the map than this book takes us to, but that's okay, because there's two more books ahead to explore them. But for now, we have Nocturna, and Motayne dazzles with a lively Latinx fantasy full of piracy, royal conspiracy, and magic both to love and to fear.

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Review: Going Off Script

Going Off Script by Jen Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: homophobia, anxiety disorder including brief mentions of medication, personal struggles with coming out.

Jen Wilde's latest is a 3.5 for me, but I'll round it up to a 4 because, well, it's Jen Wilde. And tbh my main reason for taking it down a bit of a peg is probably petty of me, but it's because my favorite Queens of Geek pairing, Taylor and Jamie, are nowhere to be seen. But at least we get Alyssa back, and Ryan from The Brightsiders, ensuring continuity of the shared universe of Wilde's books.

Review: Aru Shah and the Song of Death

Aru Shah and the Song of Death by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Following up on the very first Rick Riordan Presents novel, Roshani Chokshi brings us back to Aru Shah's adventurous world of the magical mayhem of the Hindu pantheon. While the first book was a pretty effective origin story for Aru and Mini as Pandavas, there's still a few more of them to be found...and this book introduces our next Pandava, Brynne, in pretty spectacular fashion, plunging not only Aru and Mini, but we the readers, into the action right from the get-go. And then our favorites have to go on a high-stakes quest that takes them into some pretty soapy shenanigans between the gods and queens of millennia ago. It's a rollicking adventure that does a great job of making End of Time so much past-is-prologue setup for (Han Solo voice) where the fun begins. Two Pandava novels done, and two to go...and let me tell you, the final scene setting up next year's third novel is an unforgettable cliffhanger, and not because it makes you angry the way Uncle Rick's might. No, it's a pretty good "and the adventure continues" varietal, a very welcome sight in these times of the likes of Aveyard and Bardugo and Maas giving waaaaaaay too many angry-making endings in their books...

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Review: Girls with Sharp Sticks

Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Suzanne Young returns to the style of near-future social science fiction that made The Program and its many sequels as popular as they were - in this case, a new novel that eerily plays out like a YA Handmaid's Tale and Stepford Wives mashup. Naturally, a lot of such novels have been written and published in recent years for certain topical reasons, and up there with Tehlor Kay Mejia's We Set the Dark on Fire and Natasha Ngan's Girls of Paper and Fire, Girls with Sharp Sticks is a timely, memorable, and absolutely unputdownable piece of feminist psychological chills. I won't spoil the twistiness of the book, obviously, but I could also sniff out a little influence from After the Red Rain and The Moon and the Other in this book's DNA by the time I was done with it. Suzanne Young's imagination is a dangerous place to live in, and her latest book is just another reminder - as will be, I'm sure, the inevitable sequel.

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Review: Once & Future

Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book, the first in a promising James Patterson Presents duology from partners Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, was promised to me as an utterly, unapologetically, unabashedly queer little piece of sci-fi/fantasy. I was sooooooooooo not disappointed! Think an Arthurian version of The Lunar Chronicles meets the space-faring, ultra-diverse future of The Disasters, with a girl named Ari becoming the 42nd Arthur (that's GOT to be a Douglas Adams joke right there) and going on a rollicking, romantic quest to take on a dreadful megacorporation who's out to mess up life for pretty much everyone in the solar system and beyond. Oh and yes, everyone's queer. Sound good to you? It's good to me too, another sign of the James Patterson Presents line's commitment to diverse voices along with Girls of Paper and Fire and sequels. Now let me see...do they have this one on the shelves at work? I'd think I would've seen this piece of neon-pink-cool glory pretty easily, but if it ain't there, don't worry much longer...

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Review: The 18th Abduction

The 18th Abduction by James Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In perhaps the greatest time span of any Women's Murder Club novel, we get a story bookended by a prologue and epilogue set five years after the main action - and with Lindsay Boxer maintaining some uncharacteristic (for this series) narrative distance by often invoking that five-year gap. But like a lot of other recent novels in this series, it deals in very resonant ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter, and dials the suspense and even horror factors up pretty high as you can expect. In this case, we get Lindsay and Joe learning that a Serbian war criminal has come to America and is living in San Francisco - and still committing brutalities against local women, just because he thinks he can get away with it. It reminds me of a recent story about an old military leader from...I can't remember the country, maybe it was Haiti, but there was an old despot like that found hiding out in Virginia and working as an Uber driver until someone from the old country recognized him and turned him in to the authorities? Something like that. Perhaps that inspired some of the directions that Patterson and Paetro took in this book, though it leads up to a very different kind of ending - one that has to be seen to be believed, a heart-pounding epilogue right up to the very, very last page.

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