Review: Spellhacker

Spellhacker by M.K. England
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been a little over a year since M.K. England's first novel dazzled the hell out of me, and now they're back with another unique, and uniquely cool, piece of sci-fi. But it's got a lot of fantasy too, a world where magic (called "maz") is commonplace and some are able to wield it with all sorts of elemental effects - there are fourteen types, officially, listed at the start of the book. I might have to go back to The Disasters and see if perhaps England took us back to al-Rihla in this one - perhaps not, but it'd be no surprise if they did, given that our main setting, Kyrkarta, has a similar South Asian style at least in terms of name (as does the other nearby city of Jattapore, where several of protagonist Diz's friends are looking to go to university.) Just like their first book, England gives this one a pretty diverse ensemble cast, spanning the spectra of race and gender and sexuality - though the latter is done very subtly, as the book focuses far more on friendships than relationships. It also deals with themes of struggling to rise up out of poverty by any means necessary, as well as fighting forces determined to cost future generations a livable environment. Though I do prefer The Disasters, as this one's more of a 4.5 than a straight 5, Spellhacker continues M.K. England's trend of brilliantly on-point YA sci-fi, and I'm as down as ever to see where they take us next!

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Review: Infinity Son

Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hmm. Well, I can see why this book hasn't been doing as well on GR as I've come to expect every time Adam Silvera puts out something new. To be honest, a bit of it might stem from the world building not being the best - but then again, has Silvera ever been a particularly detailed world-builder? Look at how much he actively doesn't explain where the Death-Cast app gets its information in They Both Die, for instance. He's much more character-driven, always has been, for which I've always appreciated him because his characters are some of the best-rendered in the business. Hell, it was his parts of What If It's Us that made me not want to completely just forget that book existed.

Review: Blood Heir

Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a little hard to rate this book and/or review it without thinking about the controversies that erupted around it roughly this time last year, leading to the book first being pulled from release, then rescheduled for almost six months later. It's especially unfortunate that a lot of major plot points (though mercifully not all of them) got spoiled in the name of exposing what some perceived as severely problematic content. Given, though, that Zhao wrote a lot of the in-universe atrocities in this book in reference to contemporary issues in Asia - most notably human trafficking and slavery - I'm actually glad that she, based on what I'm seeing in this finished copy, didn't shy away from the content that caused such strong reactions in the community before.

Review: All the Stars and Teeth

All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see now why Tomi Adeyemi not only blurbed Adalyn Grace's instant-bestselling debut, but also accompanied her on the first West Coast leg of her book tour as well. Adeyemi and Grace are, in a lot of ways, cut from the same cloth, both writing lavishly detailed fantasies with whip-smart on-point social commentary and complex magic systems taking lots of inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender (fittingly, Grace was an intern on The Legend of Korra, a fact I managed to be completely unaware of until the day I went to Kepler's Books to get a signed copy.) Grace's unique twist on the formula involves a princess with a bit of difficulty mastering the one form of magic that the royals of this world are supposed to have, getting her hands dirty while also caring how good she looks in that dress, navigating the dangers of seas teeming with mermaids ready to lay hands and get bitey, tangling in all the ways with a charming pirate scoundrel, and in the last hundred pages or so, some seriously major twists that...yeah, that's exactly why Adeyemi did the blurb. Grace may only be planning a duology, but I'm really psyched to know how exactly she can give this whole story a conclusion. This one, the ending leaves open so many unpredictable potential twists...and also, now I see exactly why, when I asked my question at the event, Grace was soooooo coy about her answer...

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Review: Ali Cross

Ali Cross by James Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After nearly thirty years writing mystery novels with Alex Cross, James Patterson now gives us a spinoff for the kids, centering on Alex's precocious son, Ali - already shaping up to be a great junior detective in his own right. And for his first case, it's naturally pretty personal - one of his best friends, Gabe Qualls, for whom Ali is one of his few friends both IRL and in the popular video game Outpost (a kind of mashup of Minecraft and Fortnite), has gone missing, and literally nobody is putting more effort into finding him than Ali. And Alex, of course, since the elder Cross gets quite a few interludes in third person - unusual since he's a first-person narrator in all his stories, but then again, it's Ali's turn now. Patterson's no stranger to writing from a precocious kid's POV - look at Max Ride or Rafe Khatchadorian - and Ali Cross, not that I expected any less, is more than worthy of membership in his bibliography. Good thing is, Patterson's already planning a series out of this - can't wait to recommend it to all the kids!

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