Review: The Burning God

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This...can't be it. 

This can't be the end of R.F. Kuang's debut series. 

How can she possibly keep it only as this one trilogy after that ending? 

Review: Instant Karma

Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow, ain't this a surprise...a Marissa Meyer book that I didn't love with all my heart the second I read it all? But then again, it's also extremely different from all her previous books, being a contemporary romance with only the barest hint of fantasy, and even then it's really just a faint tinge of fabulism at best. Though it's a pretty interesting premise, a girl who starts to think she's developed the ability to cast "instant karma" on anyone who deserves it, of which there are way too many in the (implied Northern California, since San Francisco is the nearest major city and there's a sea lion rescue she volunteers at) beach town she calls home. Interesting it is for sure, especially since it reminds me a tad bit of a certain middle-grade contemporary from this year: Lisa Moore Ramee's Something to Say, where Jenae starts to suspect she's developed a similar power herself and there's really nothing to say she hasn't. But honestly, I think Meyer didn't do as much with this concept as she should have - the story is surprisingly slow-moving, with little to nothing of consequence happening for long stretches of time, and I still feel like there isn't really an ending either. The book just...stops. I guess Meyer, after years of crafting long-running fantasy and sci-fi series, switched gears just a little too abruptly. But I'm sure this book will find its fans, as do all of Meyer's books.

View all my reviews

Review: A ​Sky Beyond the Storm

A ​Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sabaa Tahir's back with the fourth and final book of her Ember in the Ashes series, and after more than two years since its predecessor came out, it's a pretty long Endgame to the Infinity War that was Reaper. 

Some time has passed since that book ended on such a devastating note, with the promise of a truly apocalyptic war in the finale. Now, while Tahir takes a little time getting there - I mean, the book isn't really that much longer than its predecessors, only a shade over 500 pages this time - the book also runs a little slow in general in its first half, and even its first three-fifths. Maybe that comes from our three main POV characters being in unusually close proximity after spending a good chunk of Books 2 and 3 pretty far apart, spread out in such a way that the reader needs to keep flipping the pages just to stand a chance at seeing where they'll go next.

Review: Rhythm of War

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How does Brandon Sanderson do it? Seriously...how? A decade into this series and already a total of over 4000 pages written over four books, at least 1.5 million words by now...and this on top of other projects of his? Wax and Wayne? Skyward and sequels? Even the Steelheart trilogy? Nah, but The Stormlight Archive is well and truly his magnum opus, and here, it's pretty clear that Sanderson is absolutely on top of his game. Weaving in beautifully complex and heart-tugging narratives of the horrors of war, the futility of war, the aggravation of being locked in an endless campaign that never ends...and of course, the frank looks at the effects of a wide variety of mental illnesses on our heroes. Especially Kaladin and his depression, and Shallan and her dissociative identity disorder. Not to mention all kinds of PTSD heaped on top of everything and everyone else. Blake was right, Chapter 80 was well and truly something else...but then Part Five comes along and kicks the story into one of its highest gears yet, including a moment that almost had me screaming my lungs out from sheer shock. And then, with the promise of capping off the first of Sanderson's planned two Stormlight arcs in the fifth book...well, let's just say we really, REALLY need to see him keep up on his god-tier talents. Though I also wouldn't be surprised if we had to wait four or even five years for it...but unlike most other fantasy authors, I absolutely trust Sanderson to deliver.

View all my reviews

Review: Lost Roads

Lost Roads by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit, I'd almost forgotten that Jonathan Maberry was continuing the Rot and Ruin with a second series, but now, it's good to see that he's got a second book out with Gutsy Gomez, Benny Imura, and all our favorite zom-hunters - and yes, Joe Ledger, whose main series of (adult) sci-fi thrilllers, I remain perennially behind on. Just like Broken Lands before it, Lost Roads is terrifyingly fast-paced, blistering and bloody the whole way as we unravel even more of the secret origin of the zoms, and witness the rise of the Raggedy Man, naked except for his aged hospital scrubs and sounding seriously like something out of Mad Max. (That I'm reading this on the day that the Toecutter, and more recently Immortan Joe, passed away feels a bit oddly on the nose.) Though this book ends on a pretty solid note, it also stays open to the promise of further adventures for Gutsy, Benny, and all their friends and allies - and if Maberry gives us a third book in this series, I'd be a most happy camper indeed.

View all my reviews

Review: Somebody Told Me

Somebody Told Me by Mia Siegert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Major trigger warnings for this book: queerphobia in many forms (especially trans- and enbyphobia), sexual assault, pedophilia, suicide. 

Years after giving the world Jerkbait, Mia Siegert returns with a new #ownvoices novel, presenting us with a bigender protagonist: Aleks/Alexis, who uses either name depending on which gender they are at the moment. Sometimes that gender flips from day to day, sometimes in the middle of the day. Either way, though, Aleks/Alexis is plagued with a terrible inner monologue, dishing out painful needle-under-the-thumbnail insults and calling up as many painful memories as possible. 

Review: The Challenger

The Challenger by Taran Matharu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Taran Matharu's back with the second book of his second trilogy - well, that's a bit misleading since Summoner has a full-length prequel and all, and who knows if he'll follow up this series with a prequel novel as well? For now, though, we're continuing to explore, through Cade's eyes, the mysterious world on which he and his schoolmates, and a few 80s girls, and a few Roman legionnaires, find themselves stuck, now facing some major new threats - most memorable among them, Caesarion, son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, who of course rules this world with a lot of the ancient bread-and-circuses, gladiator-fighting playbook. (And he's managed to pick up English pretty quickly in the space of only a few years too, so there's that.) Though this one does kinda feel like a case of Middle Book Syndrome, Matharu's singular gift for action propels the book at an unstoppable pace as always, and even more than any book since his debut in The Novice, the action simply doesn't stop until the very last page, when another weapons-grade cliffhanger slams Cade and the reader full force. Luckily, we've already got the third book in the series lined up for a 2021 release - and let's just say I'm glad I didn't look at the summary of that one on GR before finishing this one first!

View all my reviews

Review: The Ravens

The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige put their minds together to start a pretty strong new YA/NA fantasy series about witchy sorority sisters, some of whom may have a few secrets in their pasts - and family legacies too. Split between two third-person POVs, Vivi and Scarlett, it seems pretty clear to me that Vivi is Paige's character (she shares a lot of background with Amy from Dorothy Must Die, raised by a single mother, very poor, and living out in a pretty desolate place - the Nevada desert - when we first meet her), so it stands to reason that Morgan wrote Scarlett and her years of experience in the Ravens sorority. I could be wrong, of course...but what I'm right about is that this is a really cool magical thriller, laden with magical bonding and the usual relationship troubles, both sisterly and romantic. Hell, while most YA readers are kinda done with love triangles at this point, I think Morgan and Paige did one that works very well and keeps me, the reader, super invested. Already we're looking at a sequel soon, The Monarchs - can't wait for that!

View all my reviews

Review: Black Sun

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rebecca Roanhorse made her name with futuristic post-apocalyptic fantasy inspired by the legends of the Navajo, and now she's set her sights on the past with the start of an all-new epic fantasy inspired by pre-Columbian Indigenous civilizations. Combining not only Native American (especially Aztec and Maya) influences, but also Polynesian as well, Roanhorse gives us a world of gods and monsters, magic and mayhem, pirates and prophecy, and oh so much riding on what happens when a blind young man hitches a ride on a ship of dubious repute, captained by a powerful Teek (a people whose unique magic reminds me, at least, of sirens.) There are several POV characters we've got in this story - though by far, my favorites are Serapio, blinded at a young age and meant to be connected to a certain crow god, and Xiala, the Teek sea captain whose dynamic with Serapio is intensely shippable and shippably intense. I'll admit, when the POV brings us back to the mainland and a few dramatic reveals about the Sun Priests whose power is threatened by Serapio and the forthcoming Convergence, I really find myself wishing to be back at sea just because I love Serapio and Xiala so much more as characters and as people. But it's a damn fine story, full of vibrant characters (and pretty extensive diverse representation, not only of disability but also LGBTQ+, as Roanhorse makes frequent inclusion of bi and/or pansexual characters, nonbinary and trans characters complete with neopronouns, etc. etc.) and movie-quality visuals from the cover on down deep. While we may be waiting quite a while for a third book in the Sixth World series, if we get more adventures in this series during that time - especially a much-needed Book 2! - it'll be so worth the wait.

View all my reviews

Review: The Shadow Crosser

The Shadow Crosser by J.C. Cervantes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zane Obispo's trilogy of Mayan demigod adventures comes to an end at last, and I'm sad that I wasn't able to read this in publication order with the larger Riordan-verse, since I wound up reading both Tristan Strong Destroys the World and The Tower of Nero first. But The Shadow Crosser opens on a decidedly ominous note, only to ramp up the action and thrills in a way that can only be described as hellishly awesome. And it includes an unexpected sci-fi twist that I'm frankly surprised Yoon Ha Lee and/or Carlos Hernandez didn't beat J.C. Cervantes to including in a Rick Riordan Presents title first - though also, lowkey grateful they didn't, because Hernandez already gets into a lot of space-time shenanigans as it is (though who's complaining?), and if Lee did it, it'd be downright mathematical to a degree not seen in any kidlit book past, present, or future. So I'm kinda glad Cervantes did it, and in a way tailor-made to appeal to me too! So, for the first time for sure, I'm bidding a Rick Riordan Presents series ave atque vale, and hoping to see more great work from J.C. Cervantes in the future!

View all my reviews

Review: The Tower of Nero

The Tower of Nero by Rick Riordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It only occurs to me after finishing this novel - the official fifteenth in the mainline Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, not including the two trilogies that spun off into non-Greco-Roman pantheons - that Rick Riordan's never really given any of them a sense of a straight-up ending. Up to now. But given that this one is meant to be the last in the mainline 'verse - at least for now, though Uncle Rick absolutely leaves the door open to continue a lot of side characters' stories, though they'll likely wind up in the hands of Rick Riordan Presents authors if nothing else (Reyna, especially, comes to mind, as does Nico, who really deserves his own spinoff series with Will) - it really stands out that this one makes it a point of NOT ending on a cliffhanger for once. No, we finally wrap up Apollo's adventure in a mortal shell, with tons of difficulty against the last and worst of the Triumvirate of immortal Roman emperors, the city-burning fiddler and casually matricidal Nero. Man, it's a good thing we were able to defeat Donald Trump in this year's election, otherwise this book would probably hit a little too hard with Nero threatening to fiddle while New York burns. Kronos, Gaea, eat your hearts out. But to the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, I now bid a most gracious ave atque vale while waiting for Riordan's next book - rumor has it he'll be working in Celtic mythology next? Makes sense, really.

View all my reviews

Review: The Silvered Serpents

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four years ago, I tried to read a Roshani Chokshi book for the first time - her debut, no less. I didn't enjoy it so much, and couldn't even finish it - and the election happening around that time turned into a complete disaster. Is it coincidence that around the time of the next election, I'm reading another Chokshi book, and I finished it and enjoyed it and it's looking like we might just squeak through a victory against the fascist pretender in chief? Damn, I sure hope so. That said, though, it's a damn good book that Chokshi's given us, well worth the extended wait since its predecessor last year. I can see now why she dedicated this one to Nicolas Cage - it's very much a treasure hunting kind of story, globe-trotting to the level I love to see in James Rollins's Sigma Force adventures as our multicultural ensemble travels from Paris to Russia, Siberia, and Istanbul in search of an artifact that promises to completely upend the world of magical Forging forever. And if it could save some of them from dying young, bonus! But of course, Chokshi doesn't make things even the slightest bit easy for her starring cast, who find themselves facing all sorts of obstacles, Egyptian mythomagic, and naturally, a dangerous cliffhanger or two as we await the inevitable trilogy conclusion. Hopefully that one won't be as long a wait...

View all my reviews

Review: Skyhunter

Skyhunter by Marie Lu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

And to stop myself from stressing out too much about this year's increasingly nerve-wracking election results, I hereby review Marie Lu's latest YA fantasy thriller - somewhat in the vein of The Young Elites, and yet, coming across as even deeper into the future than any of her scary apocalyptic future visions, with its depiction of the ruins of the Early Ones (basically, modern society.) Though unlike The Young Elites, it shies away somewhat from having straight-up counterpart cultures - you know, how the Sealands took inspiration from Italy, Spain, and Malta; the Skylands were Anglo-French; the Sunlands were North African-like, that sort of thing. But reading this book, it's still not hard to read it as a critique of America, with the Karensa Federation being imperialist as hell and only one nation on the entire continent refusing to fall to the Federation and its reanimated Ghost armies and poison gas attacks - the latter of which have caused our protagonist Talin to lose her voice permanently due to scars on her vocal chords, meaning she must communicate in sign language. A bit of a combination of Adelina, disabled as a young girl, and Elisa from The Shape of Water with the specific disability Lu wrote into her character. As with most of Lu's books, though, this one is not only smart and thoughtful in its sociopolitical critique, but amazingly fast-paced in its action as well. Though this time, it builds up to a positively Aveyardian cliffhanger, reminding me so much of Glass Sword it's not even funny. One thing's for sure, I hope Lu gets to go on tour in person for the inevitable sequel to this one - which, if I'm not wrong, will once again be the conclusion of a duology. At least I know from Warcross that Lu's one of those authors who can do the duology trend right...

View all my reviews

Review: The Nemesis

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

I remember it took me a little while to find and read the second book in this trilogy after it came out...to say nothing of how long it took us to get Book 3. Three years, just about! Holy crap, was Kincaid leaving us hanging high and dry after the cliffhanger ending of Book 2 or what? But I have to say, The Nemesis was absolutely worth the wait, one of the most stylishly spacey action-packed books YA sci-fi ever gave us. And not too dissimilar to another genre-great series conclusion, Death's End, Kincaid gives us a book very much expanded in scope and scale, stretching across time to a degree her previous books never have. And also compressing that scale when a few big twists make themselves known and throw everything we know about the world of this universe out the window, Matrix-style. Kincaid concludes another trilogy as grandly as possible, and I have to say, as cool as her debut trilogy was, this series has blown Insignia and sequels out of the water. But now, to The Diabolic, I hereby bid ave atque vale.

View all my reviews

Review: Night of the Dragon

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish it hadn't taken me this long to finally get around to reading Julie Kagawa's latest book, the conclusion to her #ownvoices Japanese-inspired fantasy trilogy. Blame all the mishmash of time and book publication schedules caused by the coronavirus, I guess. But read this book I did, and like pretty much every Kagawa book to date, Night of the Dragon is amazingly high on both action and romance, thrilling to the nth degree and pushing some of the highest stakes in the genre as these kitsune and demon adventures finally come to an end. Though of course Kagawa's got more books in the pipeline - including a return to The Iron Fey that's got me wanting to reread that series from the beginning! - to the Shadow of the Fox trilogy, I now bid ave atque vale.

View all my reviews

Review: Tristan Strong Destroys the World

Tristan Strong Destroys the World by Kwame Mbalia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though there was no promise at the time of its release that there would be a second story for Tristan Strong, it was still pretty clear that there was no way this section of the Rick Riordan Presents multiverse was going to be just one and done. And now, just about one year after Kwame Mbalia gave us the first book, Tristan's got more story to tell - naturally, because he's got the storytelling skills of Anansi on his side, up to and including to a particularly magical smartphone where Anansi is the "web developer" of the Diaspor-app, among other creations. So yeah, Tristan's not done with his adventures in MidPass and Alke, not by a long shot. And while this book doesn't yet announce a name for its follow-up, there is absolutely no way Mbalia's not giving us a third book, not with that nasty little cliffhanger. Clearly he's been learning pretty well from the master, Uncle Rick himself...

View all my reviews

Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

«Il y a mourir dans "je t'aime" 

Il y a "je ne vois plus que toi" 

Mourir au monde, à ses poèmes 

Ne plus lire que ses rimes à soi 

"Un malhonnête stratagème" 

Ces trois mots là n'affirment pas 

Il y a une question dans "je t'aime" 

Qui demande "et m'aimes-tu, toi?"» 

-Jean-Jacques Goldman, "Sache que je" 

Perhaps the most long-awaited V.E. Schwab book since she concluded the Shades of Magic trilogy in 2017, and certainly long in its gestation too - ten years, to hear Schwab herself say it. And after reading this lyrical, surreally dreamy, emotionally devastating novel, I can believe it. 

Review: Battle Ground

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bloodydamn goryhell, Jim Butcher. After years of waiting for more books from this amazing author, he's now given us two new Dresden Files books in 2020 alone - and while Peace Talks is something of a Prolonged Prologue, it's Battle Ground, naturally, that's packed to the gills from start to finish with some of the most gnarly, apocalyptic action Harry Dresden has faced yet. As supernatural war breaks out all over Chicago, with far-reaching consequences even beyond the last page, it almost feels like this is, itself, the Prolonged Prologue to Butcher's proposed "apocalyptic trilogy" to wrap the series up. And with the next three hypothetical books in the series bringing it to a total of 20, what better point to begin the beginning of the end? Just hope it doesn't take another five or six years just to begin that trilogy, though - if that is, in fact, next in line for Dresden and his cohorts.

View all my reviews

Review: Dear Justyce

Dear Justyce by Nic Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was something of a surprise that Nic Stone came out with this sequel/prequel/spinoff to Dear Martin, but she acknowledges right off the bat that it came about out of necessity. While Justyce's story was an all-important one, a searing glimpse into the life of a young Black man whose intelligence doesn't protect him from a racist system, Stone also got a lot of reader responses wondering, what about Black boys who don't come from Justyce's position of relative privilege? And so we get the story of Quan Banks, who knew Justyce when they were much younger boys, but wound up on a different track in life - no fancy private school, but a broken family (including an awful stepdad who, in his ten-year-old mind, became a real-life Count Olaf as he found his escape in A Series of Unfortunate Events) and unjust incarceration. Thus, not unlike Justyce writing letters to MLK, Quan writes letters to Justyce, hoping to get some much needed help. Luckily, Justyce has some good knowledge he's picked up in his first year at Yale (in stark contrast with his old schoolmate Jared, who's just as obnoxiously white-privileged as ever, to the point of bragging about not getting arrested for marijuana possession in Connecticut when Justyce would've most likely done hard time in the same situation.) As with the first book, Stone writes this one in a similar experimental style, incorporating bursts of heavily line-broken verse and even screenplay and interview-type formats, in addition to the letters interspersed between chapters. It's the first time I've seen her revisit one of her old storytelling formats, but then again, she's proven herself such a powerful and prolific storytelling stylist that it's only to her benefit as always.

View all my reviews

Review: Into the Real

Into the Real by Z Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been three years since Pibling Z, leader of the glorious Minion Horde, gifted us with a new book, and now they're back this year with two great new stories. Well, I still haven't read Soulbroken yet, sadly, because my only e-reader is my phone browser when I'm borrowing library ebooks and my library still doesn't have that one yet. I know, I know, I'm a bad Minion...but I digress. Today, I'm here to talk about Brewer's most expansive and ambitious standalone novel yet - a trio of intermeshed horror storylines, each rooted in different universal fears and fears unique to LGBTQIA+ community members. Major trigger warnings abound for blood, gore, deaths of family members and loved ones, open homophobia and transphobia, conversion therapy, and demonic terror all over the place.

Review: The Faithless Hawk

The Faithless Hawk by Margaret Owen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If I remember correctly, the first book in this series was a 3.5 for me that I rounded up to a four, and the second book is the same way. Though I'm somewhat disappointed that Owen went and did the duology route - I can never understand why that's such a trend these last few years, especially in YA fantasy - the intensive world-building and spine-tingling magic system, not to mention the series' increased relevance today with its heavy use of quarantines and plagues and a Kuvira-like villain willing to "roll the bones" on said plagues (I think that's an exact quote? Either that or a very close paraphrase) purely for social and political gain, all conspire to make The Merciful Crow and The Faithless Hawk mandatory reading in this year. To this series, though, I now must sadly bid ave atque vale.

View all my reviews

Review: The Relentless Moon

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a couple of years since Mary Robinette Kowal put out a novel in this alternate history series of the Lady Astronaut, and a year or so since The Calculating Stars won that Hugo and got my attention onto this series but good. So now, I've finally bought and read a copy of the third book - one that's more of a sequel to Book 1 than Book 2, taking place roughly concurrently with The Fated Sky as promised, and following more early 60s progress on Earth and the Moon in the post-Meteor timeline. This time, our POV character isn't Elma York, but Nicole Wargin, Lady Astronaut and wife of the charismatic Governor of Kansas, who's looking to run for President in 1964. Of course, this being a dangerous post-apocalypse of a solar system, it throws every wrench it can in both their ways. Frequent disastrous mechanical failures of rockets to the Moon, Earth First terrorists stoking riots and trying to blame it on race, continued geological and climatic cataclysms on Earth, a polio outbreak on the Artemis lunar base provoking preventative measures that feel eerily prescient of COVID (which of course struck after Kowal finished writing this book), especially since this alternate timeline doesn't have a polio vaccine as Jonas Salk never finished his work on it. And, in Nicole's case, anorexia, which she's mostly got a handle on, but has caused her some serious long-term health complications that tend to loom large throughout the novel. While a bit on the long side, especially compared to its predecessors, The Relentless Moon is a more than worthy addition to Kowal's Lady Astronaut Universe, helping bridge the gap between the first two books and the upcoming fourth, The Derivative Base, pretty neatly, if I do say so myself.

View all my reviews

Review: Cemetery Boys

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Happy spooky season, friends, with this review of Aiden Thomas's recently National Book Award-nominated debut novel - and while it was supposed to have originally come out three months ago, I'm glad it instead came along on the verge of fall. Helpfully, reading this book now seems to have helped chase away a bit of the Bay Area's smoky skies and heat waves - for now anyway, because climate change and all that. But while Yadriel's brujo powers are more linked to the souls of the dead, I'd be willing to credit him with helping usher in some nicer weather as I read his misadventure about meeting a dead boy whose soul needs to cross over OR ELSE. 

Review: The Lost Book of the White

The Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cassie Clare AND Wesley Chu collaborating?



About this guy?



And it's a trilogy?





(I think the above pre-review was written when this title was supposed to be for the first book and not swapped with The Red Scrolls of Magic, but the sentiment still stands.) 

The second book of Alec and Magnus's spinoff series was, sadly, spoiled for many when some damn fool leaked the entire manuscript somewhere. A demon pox on all their house for trying to tank Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu so shamelessly...but given that the book debuted at #1 on the NYT Bestseller List anyway, I'd like to say they failed and Clare and Chu succeeded. And boy, did they succeed. 

Review: The Shadow of Kyoshi

The Shadow of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

F.C. Yee seems to enjoy operating in duologies about kickass, enormously tall Asian girls - whether it's Genie Lo, or Avatar Kyoshi. The second half of Kyoshi's YA adventure picks up with her place as the Avatar assured after it was in doubt for so much of Book 1, but still, there are those who question her title and prowess - an easier question to pose when she's having greater and greater trouble negotiating with world leaders (and navigating the drama in their courts, particularly the royal court of the Fire Nation, where he who is officially the Fire Lord isn't exactly up to the task and everyone knows it) and connecting with her past lives like Kuruk, Yangchen, and Szeto. But at least she's still got her own Team Avatar to stand alongside her with immense loyalty - and love, especially in Rangi's case. Love to stan a bisexual queen, yes we do in this house!

View all my reviews

Review: Paola Santiago and the River of Tears

Paola Santiago and the River of Tears by Tehlor Kay Mejia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not unlike Roshani Chokshi and Aru Shah, Tehlor Kay Mejia is a case of an author whose YA fantasy debut wasn't exactly my fave (sadly I couldn't even finish Chokshi's The Star-Touched Queen to this day, but someday maybe I'll give it a revisit), but I liked her Rick Riordan Presents MG fantasy debut even more. For sure, this Mexican-inspired tale of the terrors wrought by the notorious spirit La Llorona in a small Arizona town - and beyond - feels like a perfect companion to Aru Shah's books in the Rick Riordan Presents lineup. It feels like somewhat of the perfect middle ground between Aru Shah's stories and those of Sal and Gabi as well - it has an Aru-like tone, but Pao is quite the science geek, lover of all things space-related in particular, so on that level, she and Sal would make pretty fast friends. Her and Min from Dragon Pearl as well. Mejia, though, perfectly captures not only the oppressive heat of the Arizona summer, but also the fear of all the elders' old superstitions - and the old ladies' chanclas - permeating every aspect of life for Pao and her neighbor Dante. Especially when one of their closest friends becomes just the latest in a string of mysterious disappearances...boy, is this a wild adventure for the ages, and luckily, Mejia's already working on a sequel!

View all my reviews

Review: Darius the Great Deserves Better

Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I almost didn't expect that Adib Khorram would write a second book about Darius the Great, but after the well-deserved acclaim his debut novel got, why the hell not? And so it goes, two years down the line in real time, and months enough that Darius has actually grown up quite a bit. Physically and psychologically. He's not only six foot three, he's also lost some weight from taking up soccer at school - a bit of Sohrab's influence there, am I right? - though he's still pretty self-conscious about having a little more tummy than he'd like. God, that's so relatable. And as for his mental health, he's got a new and improved balance of medication, he's taken several levels in self-confidence, and he's openly gay and has a boyfriend now.

Review: Love, Creekwood

Love, Creekwood by Becky Albertalli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mmmmmmm...I dunno. I mean, Becky Albertalli is just one of those authors with whom my responses to her books have always been up and down, very middling, and typically either rising or nosediving in hindsight. Does that make sense? I dunno. But I just feel like this little novella was trying too hard to be an epilogue to both Simon Vs. and Leah on the Offbeat, and as someone who didn't really like Leah's book all that much - and has absolutely soured on it more and more over time, mostly because Leah is just too abrasive and Tumblr-y for my taste - I really wish this story could've just been a Simon/Bram epilogue instead. Now that, I would've loved to have seen - those two have my heart like no other characters Becky has ever created. But even so, just the way this story was formatted - all emails, and many of them a bunch of email strings within strings - was aggravating to read in ebook format from my local library. Maybe it would've been better off if I'd read it in print - and hey, at least Albertalli made it clear she was donating all the profits for this one to charity. I know a lot of people are kinda down on Albertalli for "writing outside her lane" with Simon, but let's be honest, Simon is the best character she ever wrote, and it shows in the ending he and Bram get. But as far as a follow-up to his story, I think I'm going to be much more enthusiastically following Love, Victor instead.

View all my reviews

Review: Peace Talks

Peace Talks by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahhhhhhhh. Six years since the last Dresden Files book, and look, Jim Butcher's finally got us fans really truly well fed with the promise of two full-length novels this year alone. Also, the promise of both of them being a pretty full-fledged duology within the series' greater scope - aptly titled with opposing names too, Peace Talks and Battle Ground. So yeah, let's be real, this book is setting up a lot of nasty, nasty crap to be resolved in its immediate successor, but fear not - Butcher's giving us the next book only two months after this one came out, perhaps to make up for the extremely long absence he's had since Skin Game. (To say nothing of the even longer wait we've had since the first book of The Cinder Spires - but hey, at least this isn't a Patrick Rothfuss or a George R.R. Martin situation going on here.) While it's pretty clear that this book is a Prolonged Prologue to Battle Ground, though...what's no laughing matter is the cliffhanger this one ends on. Damn, but that one hurt, right in the gut, Harry.

View all my reviews

Review: Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tamsyn Muir got off to a pretty kickass start with her complex, obscenely disturbingly cool Gideon the Ninth, but after the horrifying twist ending to that one, where could she go next? Why, into even deeper levels of instability, of course. Harrow the Ninth now gets into the head of the young princess of the Ninth House, now one of the Emperor's new Lyctors, but the ending of the first book has left her with a pretty serious mental split. In addition to half the book being told in a peculiar second-person perspective (like Muir got possessed by the spirit of N.K. Jemisin), we get a good three or four fifths of the book kinda lowkey pretending like that big twist from Book 1 didn't happen. But then right around pages 350-400 or so, the veil falls away, and we finally get a ton of answers and even more unexpected and scary twists, murders on top of murders and truths on top of truths...holy Necrolord Prime, Batman! Only one more to go in this trilogy, which of course I'll be autobuying next year. I hope...

View all my reviews

Review: Felix Ever After

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: transphobia, allusions to homophobia, allusions to deadnaming, assorted bullying, catfishing.

There's a lot of YA contemporaries in recent years that I'll give a 3.5 and either round up or down. This one, I'll round up because of how much Felix Love, as a Black, queer, trans teen, needs the love. Yeah, I know, bad pun, bad Ricky...but I'm sure Felix would approve.

Review: Something to Say

Something to Say by Lisa Moore Ramee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Much like her debut novel, last year's A Good Kind of Trouble, Lisa Moore Ramee's Something to Say is a pretty sweet, and pretty important, MG contemporary with lots of on-point commentary about social justice. Especially in a year when Black Lives Matter, and protests of the kind seen in Ramee's first book, have come into sharper cultural focus than ever before - and, pretty presciently, this book deals with the potential renaming of a public SoCal institution away from John Wayne, since I'm pretty sure I saw a recent news headline about a petition to rename the airport in Orange County after his infamous pro-white supremacy quotes from the 70s resurfaced for at least the third time in as many years.

Review: The ​Crow Rider

The ​Crow Rider by Kalyn Josephson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last year, I was lucky enough to get an ARC of The Storm Crow, and now I get to complete Kalyn Josephson's debut duology - which, while (I know it's a bit wearing of me to say) I still don't understand why duologies have become such a thing in YA, especially, it's a pretty well-done conclusion here in The Crow Rider. (Though let's be real, that crow on the cover looks stressed as hell, though it also reminds me a bit of a character my friend Koda created recently...hmm...) But anyway. As YA fantasy goes, this series does a damned good job of exploring resistance to a nefarious colonial power, with a lot of twists piled up on top of it so such a topical storyline doesn't just play out in the simplest of terms either. Though the first half of the book moves pretty slowly, the second half loads in all the high action and amazement that makes this duology worth recommending. So with that, I hereby declare ave atque vale to this series, and wait with bated breath for Kalyn Josephson's next work...

View all my reviews

Review: The Empire of Gold

The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm so glad that this is one of a small handful of books I've been able to acquire in physical form since California got locked down - and that I found my way to the right place to get a signed first edition from Chakraborty herself, courtesy of Interabang Books in Dallas. The Empire of Gold, a green and gold brick of paper clocking in at over 750 pages, wraps up the trilogy in such amazing fashion that I'm glad I took my sweet time savoring it a little more strongly than I even did for the first two books the first times I read those.

Review: Clap When You Land

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: parental death, stalking, sexual assault.

Elizabeth Acevedo returns to the novel-in-verse style that helped her debut so amazingly in The Poet X and once again brings us a literary experience unlike any other. This time, she splits the book between the POVs of two Dominican girls - Yahaira, living in NYC, and Camino, living on the island - and how their lives unexpectedly intertwine in the wake of a DR-bound plane crashing after leaving New York.

Review: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor 
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third official novel of Welcome to Night Vale...aka the reason why I finally started binge-listening to the podcast today, at long last. This secret backstory of Mara Wilson's character is so vastly different from any of the other Night Vale media I've yet seen, being specifically a period piece and centered on a backstory set all over Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Lots of Franchia and Svitz, and Luftnarp, and Russia, and even Malta - I'm not kidding, there's a whole scene of pomegranate- and lemon-heisting on the docks of Valletta and redistributing the fruity wealth as the villagers on the other side of the island deserve. And by the time this mostly linear, but occasionally flashing back forward to the near-present day, story ends, and the truth of its great twist comes out...holy crap, do Fink and Cranor have that game down or what? No wonder I had to finally start the podcast from the beginning today. 11 episodes in, 159 to go as of today...

View all my reviews

Review: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sorry, SJM, but this is now the best fantasy novel to use "Ruin" in the title. Sorry, I don't make the rules! Lol.

But seriously, though, after at least a year or two of dying for this debut - one of oh so many awe and some success stories from Pitch Wars (one day I'll be one of them too, one day...) I am happy to report that Roseanne A. Brown does NOT disappoint in the slightest. A lavishly built fantasy world rooted in West African legends, with some pretty strong Ancient Egyptian and Islamic influences as well, and some of the highest stakes you'll ever see, with our protagonists both forced into somewhat anti-heroic roles as they need to kill each other in order to complete their respective supernatural missions. 

Review: This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story

This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Right now everyone's raving about Kacen Callender for their newest book Felix Ever After, but sadly my library isn't open to distribute copies, and for some reason doesn't have ebooks of it either. I'm mystified that they haven't, especially during Pride Month, but at least they had the ebook of Callender's YA debut, which I've clearly been sleeping on for quite a while. Casually inclusive in its casting just like a lot of the best YA in recent years, this book focuses on a Black bi boy, Nathan Bird, trying to navigate both applications to a creative-writing program (he's looking to get into screenwriting, which I very much appreciate) and the numerous on-again, off-again relationship shenanigans his circle of friends gets into. (Notably, his ex-girlfriend, with whom he's trying to relearn how to be friends platonically, now has a girlfriend herself - and nobody bats an eye, as well they shouldn't.) And then in comes his old childhood friend Oliver James Hernandez (frequently referred to by his first and middle name both), back in Seattle after having lived in Santa Fe for quite some time. Nathan kissed Oliver James before the latter moved away, and now that they're back in each other's lives, they can finally rekindle that spark...but is it truly still viable after so many years? You'll just have to wait and find out. And I'll be honest, I almost cried reading this book because it's just one of so many that is so realistically sex-positive that it hurts me, a boy who's never had a chance at living a sex-positive life. Well, maybe when I move to Oregon or Washington, as I recently brought up in a quote-tweet from Callender themself asking about people's future plans. It'll take a miracle, but if there's one thing Callender showcases in their work, it's the truth that miracles do happen...even if they don't quite turn out like how you expect.

View all my reviews

Review: Aurora Burning

Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First off, Ms. Kaufman and Mister Kristoff, HOW DARE YOU. 

I mean, that's standard operating procedure for any book by these two (especially the notorious latter, one of SFF's most rockstar writers there is), but with this book's ending, especially... HOW VERY DARE YOU.

Building on Aurora Rising and its brilliant hybridization of Alien and The Collapsing Empire, now we get to see the consequences of the conspiracy being unearthed - and hoo boy, is this book a doozy. Once again laden with a vast array of POVs from all across Aurora Squad, with a better balance of all of them this time - like, in Book 1, Zila was severely underused and got the shortest chapters by far. But now it feels like everyone has much more equal time, which only makes the final chapter - and that horrifyingly Aveyardian cliffhanger that I've been hearing Mister Kristoff troll us about on Instagram for months - hurt that much more. I really don't see how they can possibly fix this for a third book...but it's Kaufman and Kristoff. Maker's breath, of course they bloody will.

View all my reviews

Review: A Song Below Water

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Much highlighted as one of several big Black YA releases from last week, this one was pretty quick to get to me as an e-book loan through my local library - and damn, did it prove timely. Set in an alternate world where there are various fantasy beings living amongst humans, and where one of our two protagonists, Tavia, is a siren forced to deal with extreme bigotry at all times - this on top of her being a Black girl, one of very few in Portland, though Portland is also home to a pretty good network of sirens within the Black community - it comes as no surprise that she has her work cut out for her if she's to survive in this world. A world where a murder trial in southern Oregon is expected to end with the defendant's acquittal just because the victim was a siren. A world where Tavia inadvertently uses her voice to get out of a police stop - and attracts the wrong kind of attention from a cop whose son she knows pretty damn well. And, of course, one of the most popular reality shows in this world features a siren who willingly puts on a collar that suppresses her voice - if you could see the number of times my stomach turned over every time that came up... 

Review: Shuri: A Black Panther Novel

Shuri: A Black Panther Novel by Nic Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nic Stone's really on a roll this year, first with her MG debut in Clean Getaway, and now, with a welcome side trip to the world of Marvel, a solo story for T'Challa's whip-smart, sharp-tongued sister Shuri. A truly all-ages adventure, Shuri takes us to Wakanda and Kenya and even London, following Shuri on a journey with her friend K'Marah, an equally wisecracking (in a way only Nic Stone could write) young Wakandan who wants to get into the Dora Milaje. The objective: figure out, before T'Challa's upcoming Challenge Day, who or what is causing the Heart-Shaped Herb, the source of the Black Panther's legendary powers, to mysteriously die off. It's a short but sweet little story, laden with feminist commentary (Shuri really wants, rightly, to prove how much she could be the Black Panther someday), extremely on-point humor that the movie version of Shuri would appreciate (all those American movie and meme jokes...), and quite a few unexpected cameos to make any and all fans smile. I was especially surprised to see a grown-up Hunter, the white boy whom T'Chaka had adopted after his family's plane crashed on Wakandan land (and made his debut in Ronald L. Smith's MG novel, Black Panther: The Young Prince), making an appearance as this particular Marvel-verse's version of the White Wolf as opposed to Bucky Barnes. The other big cameo, well, you'll have to see it for yourself, but I'm really hoping to see that particular character enter the MCU in Black Panther 2 someday - that'd be sooooooo perfect. All in all, I'm glad Nic Stone got this book out there, and I'm also really hoping to see more Shuri adventures with her name on the covers!

View all my reviews

Review: Clean Getaway

Clean Getaway by Nic Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nic Stone's fourth book is, once again, a wildly different piece of fiction compared to the three she published first. Not only because it's MG as opposed to YA, but also because it's a bit less experimental and more straightforward in its storytelling style than her previous books, which each had their own unique stylistic twists. But Clean Getaway is no less important and timely than any of Stone's YA novels, dealing heavily in the impact of racism on not only today's generation, but generations past as well. Scoob, our main character, is such a good kid, and such a well-rounded personality too - struggling with doing what's right vs. doing what'll make him popular in school, and doing what'll keep his strict father off his back. So it's no surprise that he goes on a cross-country RV trip with his G'ma, an effervescent and vibrant lady who takes him across the South from Georgia through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Along the way, he learns some unexpected family history which even his father never knew, secrets about what happened to G'pop so many years ago, the great difficulties of an interracial relationship (G'ma being white while G'pop was Black - and, notably, even in the present day, Scoob and G'ma still get a lot of negative attention from random passersby), and of course all about the Green Book. The Green Book is just one of many topics this short but powerful book covers, and in far greater detail than any school history book I've yet seen. So while Nic Stone's books should be on every high schooler's reading list, now we can start them off in middle school as well with Clean Getaway.

View all my reviews

Review: Cloak of Night

Cloak of Night by Evelyn Skye
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The conclusion to Evelyn Skye's second YA fantasy duology picks up pretty organically where its predecessor left off, working to stop the existential threat we were left with last year before it can subsume the kingdoms across the sea. This time, of course, the stars of our show have a few more secret powers on their side - namely, Daemon's newfound ability to well and truly be one with the wolves, even if it may come at the cost of his humanity. Though the story runs a tad bit slow at times, it's a damn fine ending if ever there was one, bittersweet - but sweet for sure in all the ways, even when Skye raises the stakes into the stratosphere right at the last minute. To this series, I now say ave atque vale, and hope to see more awesomeness in the future from one of the Bay Area's best and brightest.

View all my reviews

Review: Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes

Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I feel kinda bad that I've now read two Rick Riordan Presents titles out of publication order, having gotten around to Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe first. But this here third book of the Presents lineup's third series proves to be just as rollicking and awesome a Hindu-rooted adventure as its two predecessors, and with a much less foreboding title after the scary ones of the first two - though you know Chokshi isn't going to slacken on the stakes in the second half of her series, not by a long shot. Not when there's only a few days to get to the Tree of Wishes, not when there's the threat of betrayal from within, and not when...yeah, she done did cliffhang us readers again, and something fierce this time. That last line, more than any other, sticks with me and makes me unable to wait for the fourth and final novel next spring...

View all my reviews

Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ten years on from the release of Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins has returned to the world of The Hunger Games with the long-awaited prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - a prequel that, I'm sure none of us have forgotten, provoked a storm of controversy when it came out that the protagonist of this one would be a much younger Coriolanus Snow in the year of the 10th Hunger Games, rather than the Haymitch-centered prequel most of us (myself included, not gonna lie) were hoping for.

Review: House of Earth and Blood

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, it's been a minute since Sarah J. Maas gave us a good book to read - which is for the best considering how much she kinda burned herself out around 2015-18 or so with as many as 1500 pages of content each year. Now, she's back with her first book in a year and a half, and her first explicitly aimed at an adult audience - this, of course, despite how ACOTAR was an NA series that ended up on the YA shelves because NA fantasy pretty much doesn't exist. It's also her first urban fantasy as opposed to her previous high fantasy settings, set in a totally fictional city that reads like Gotham by way of The Dresden Files, with our protagonist being half-Fae and surrounded by pretty people of all sorts of supernatural persuasions. So, really not a lot different from a lot of Maas's previous books, but the high-stakes mystery elements - and the pretty well-done slow-burn romance, one of her best yet (I say this as someone whose ships were, in all her previous series, torpedoed with extreme prejudice) - help the 800-plus pages fly by pretty fast. And at least those 800 pages, I read in ebook format this time since my library was closed - which also means no none of those stupid Bible-thin pages. Hopefully Maas won't burn herself out trying to write the inevitable sequel to this one by 2021...

View all my reviews