Review: Spellslinger

Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After several years of seeing the name of Sebastien de Castell on fantasy shelves, it finally took Brett Michael Orr reading this book to get me started doing the same. And when I read this, I immediately wondered, why the heck does my bookstore shelve this in the adult fantasy section instead of YA where it pretty clearly belongs? I mean, it's like the second coming of Codex Alera, centered on a teenage boy with a certain inability to properly perform magic, but this time even more in his head due to a super welcome first-person POV...but I digress.

Review: I Wish You All the Best

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: assorted forms of queerphobia, parental rejection of a child coming out, parental emotional and/or physical abuse.

Mason Deaver's long-awaited #ownvoices nonbinary debut leaps high as one of the most groundbreaking YA books of the year, and sticks the landing pretty well. They write Ben, an eighteen-year-old enby forced to move in with their estranged sister (though she takes them in, no questions asked, and their truly, religiously awful parents rightly become the estranged ones in turn) as a scarily relatable portrait for anyone who has to deal with a wide variety of root causes of anxiety. Namely, parents who refuse to accept them when they come out. And the PTSD that Ben suffers as a result of that violent rejection, well...I'd always offer them a hug, though with their touch aversion they might say no. But moving in with Hannah, Ben gets a fully accepting home to live in, a therapist who helps them grapple with their anxiety and gender-identity issues, and a new school where they get to make new friends - and even a potential boyfriend in the sweet, flirty Nathan, who adorns the cover alongside Ben. It's not the happiest book of the year, but it does prove one of the most bittersweet overall - especially the ending, which I promise validates every page before it.

(Though Ben's parents still deserve, forever and ever, to rot in hell.)

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Review: Patron Saints of Nothing

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: death of a loved one, racist aggressions both micro and macro, allusions to drug use, allusions to prostitution, allusions to human trafficking.

Randy Ribay returns with another gripping story, this one largely set in his native Philippines, and dealing with a little-known issue in the West - Duterte's drug war. Though Duterte is pretty notorious for a lot of reasons in this country - just look at the episodes of Madam Secretary featuring a thinly disguised version of the man who tries to grab Elizabeth McCord and she punches him in the face for it - his drug war was something I'd heard almost nothing about until reading this book.

Review: We Hunt the Flame

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Much hyped for months if not years, Hafsah Faizal's Arabian-inspired fantasy debut, We Hunt the Flame, is about more than just the sands of Arawiya. It's also about the snows of Demenhur, the one caliphate where instead of the land being hot and lively, the encroachment of a cursed forest leads to a uniquely chilly desolation - and also leads to Zafira becoming the one Hunter brave enough to scavenge to provide for her people, while Nasir, the crown prince, is tasked with hunting the Hunter. And then there's the whole matter of an ever-spreading threat of curses over the whole kingdom, not helped by the fact that the source of said curses is an island almost dead center on the map of Arawiya. At once familiar and fresh, Faizal gifts us with a lyrical but blisteringly fast-paced fantasy gem, and I'm ready for Book 2 next year! No doubt thanks in good part to Allie Macedo being one of Faizal's biggest fans... :D

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Review: The Dating Game

The Dating Game by Kiley Roache
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: deportation, slut-shaming, objectification of women.

Following up on her topical and engrossing debut in last year's Frat Girl, Kiley Roache now gives us a second Warren University novel that she began working on while a student at Stanford, the obvious real-world inspiration for Warren. Reading this one, I feel that this might have been an earlier manuscript that she put on the back burner while getting Frat Girl out there and didn't quite incubate as well as she should have, but The Dating Game is still pretty appropriately topical - if oftentimes maddening to the point where it made me want to smash my head against the wall.

Review: Ghosts of the Shadow Market

Ghosts of the Shadow Market by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third compilation of previously e-book exclusive Shadowhunters-world novellas is a pretty unique one, with all ten of its stories centering on the Shadow Market that's been increasingly explored as Clare has written more and more series in this world. The stories in this compilation take place in chronological order, going back as far as the 19th century of the Infernal Devices era, going through the early 1900s with some hints about what to expect in The Last Hours, plus some unexpected mid-to-late-20th century points that have hitherto been unexplored in the larger Shadowhunters universe. By the time of the second half of the compilation, we're pretty close to the modern day, with most of these stories being set in 2012 or 2013 and having a lot of references to The Mortal Instruments, The Dark Artifices, and The Eldest Curses. So yeah, even though a lot of these stories came out during 2018, it's actually a better idea to do what I did and wait till the print compilation came out, well after both Queen of Air and Darkness and The Red Scrolls of Magic. It's a more rewarding experience that way, granting the reader the ability to understand a lot of the Easter eggs a lot more clearly...and meanwhile, there's still room to interpret a lot of scenes as signs and portents of what's to come in both The Last Hours and The Wicked Powers. So while this may be the last Cassandra Clare book we get this decade, she's looking to start the next one off strongly when Chain of Gold blesses our shelves in March 2020!

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Review: DEV1AT3

DEV1AT3 by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Can it be?

Did Jay Kristoff write a book that I wasn't super duper invested in like I almost always am when he wields his deadly pen?

Don't get me wrong, Mister Kristoff still more than earns his reputation as one of YA's deadliest, rockstarinest writers. True cert'. But also true cert' - reading this book, I felt like Kristoff was phoning it in a bit. I mean, it had to happen eventually with the way he's always juggling so many projects at once - this year, his latest collab with Amie Kaufman on Aurora Rising coming out first, and the long-awaited Darkdawn this fall. But in the middle, with the middle entry of the LIFEL1K3 trilogy, it does undeniably feel like Kristoff has lost a little bit of his touch, a piece of Sophomore Slump compounded by the feeling that this book was put out as so much product more for contractual reasons than anything else.

Review: Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows by Pittacus Lore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since Return to Zero is, supposedly, the end of the 'verse begun with I Am Number Four - a real shame, but not really all that surprising due to steadily declining sales over the course of this decade - I'm going to guess that, similarly, this bind-up of novellas is the last we're going to get as well. If so, though, it helps ensure that the series is looking to go out with a bang - and no doubt it already has, but I haven't read Return to Zero yet, so I really can't say for sure. But this set of three stories is a pretty cool one, following Six and Sam and Nemo and a few other new friends - most notably a guy named Max who gets swept up into all sorts of Mogadorian shenanigans - as they get taken all across the US, their powers variously drained by serums and parasites...and then what a bloody cliffhanger! For sure, this one's almost more essential reading before the final full novel than even last year's Fugitive Six was. Now, though, all I have to do is wait for my library order of Return to Zero to come in...

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Spider-Man: Far From Home - "The Owls Are Not What They Seem..."

...but neither are any of the other animals.

***NO SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME, BUT SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS, ESPECIALLY HOMECOMING, INFINITY WAR, AND ENDGAME, ABOUND HEREIN. FURTHER SPOILERS ABOUND FOR AGENTS OF SHIELD, AS WELL AS NON-MCU SPIDER-MAN FILMS, INCLUDING THE RAIMI TRILOGY AND AMAZING SERIES. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***

Just like Ant-Man three years ago, here we get a more lighthearted coda to a phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to follow a bombastic, intense, unremitting actioner of an Avengers movie. And after the bittersweet ending of Endgame, what better antidote than Tom Holland getting, once again, to be the sunniest exemplar yet of doing whatever a spider can?